BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

This is a hypothetical exploration into the possibility or impossibility of getting away with murder, which over four episodes covers motivation, methods, surveillance, research, eacape and clear-up, as well as the legal ramifications of planning a murder of a victim called Bob... who is fictional.

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER - PART TWO: UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

Let’s pretend that I’m going to commit a pre-meditated murder, the target is my good friend Bob. But fear not, as the murder is hypothetical, the victim is fictional and none of this will ever exist.

Am I prepared to kill him? Physically? Yes. Psychologically? Probably not. But that aside, I could easily end Bob’s life in a jiffy by sprinkling his chips with cyanide, gluing his head to a steamroller and stuffing an insane quantity of illegal fireworks up his brown mouse-house and lighting the fuse. Good times.

But the hard part isn’t the murder, the real challenge is to get away with it. So, across this four-part series I shall be planning and executing the hypothetical murder of a fictional character called Bob; soon he will be dead, I will be free, and no-one (except you good listeners) will be none the wiser.

My name is Michael, I am a murderer, and this is How To Get Away With Murder.

Part Two: Target & Surveillance.

Last week, we established that should Bob ‘accidentally’ stop living owing to his home having one-too-many cakey portraits of lovely Eva munching on a Mr Kipling (grr, I want it so bad), given the long and provable decline in our friendship, I would be the Police’s number one suspect. So, I need to plan such a perfect murder that the Police won’t even begin searching for a suspect, as they will assume that his death was either natural or an accident, but not foul-play.

Most pre-meditated killers are tripped up by either by ego, arrogance, greed, or a basic mistake having failed to research their methods and their victims beforehand. For example;

• Dennis Rader posted an old floppy-disk to the Police taunting them with clues to his identity, only he had failed to fully delete an old file on the disk, which included his work address
• Jeffrey Dahmer removed a set of handcuffs so his last victim could use the loo, the man fled
• Andrei Chikatilo was spotted in a public toilet by a policeman washing fresh blood off his face
• Judith & Alvin Neelly made a call with background noise so distinct it led Police right to them
• Henri Landru purchased roundtrip tickets for himself, but only one-way tickets for his victims
• Gordon Cummins dropped his gas-mask stencilled with his military serial-number
• Albert Fish wrote a letter to his victim’s mother using headed stationery
• Harold Shipman forged a patient’s Will leaving everything to himself
• Neville Heath signed the hotel register using his own name
• Joel Rifkin didn’t put any licence plates on his truck
• Ted Bundy was stopped by a routine traffic stop
• David Berkowitz got a parking ticket

And the list of criminally-bad cock-ups by supposedly clever killers goes on.

Research is vital, but before I choose a weapon, a method or a location, I need to understand the one variable which makes every plan unpredictable – my target, Bob – I may think I know him, but I don’t.

Everybody has secrets, both big and small, and it’s only when a loved one dies and we’re forced to sift through their personal belongings that we learn those little details about them that we never knew.
It could be something small like a habit, a hobby, a hygiene issue, an illness, a trinket or a porn stash; maybe items they once bought, gifts they were once given or things they promised they had binned; perhaps letters from lost loves, photos of missed friends and diaries full of their deepest secrets and regrets whether an affair, a trauma, a criminal past, or a love child no-one knew existed, until now. 

It would be impossible to plan Bob’s murder – to find the perfect time, place and space to erase him from the face of the Earth – unless I knew the minutia of his life, and that will take surveillance.

Here’s a few tips on how I shouldn’t research Bob. For example;

• Don’t ask him to complete a detailed survey titled ‘when is the best time to murder me?’
• Don’t ask for a guided tour of his ‘lovely house’ including all cupboards, drawers and calendars
• Don’t ask unusual questions like “Bob, how often do you bathe, how long for and do you listen to music using a plugged-in radio and leave it precariously balanced on the side of the bath?”)
• Don’t dress in a black tracksuit and prance about in the shadows like a ninja with an itchy bum
• Don’t tell MI5 that he’s a terrorist just so I can poke around his home while he’s being tortured
• Don’t peep through Bob’s bedroom window, as - if I am caught - it looks weird, it’s impossible to explain and blurting out “honestly, I have no interest in seeing you naked” doesn’t help
• Don’t tail him, especially if he often shares an Uber and the man sat next to him is always me
• Don’t offer to film his dull little life for a TV series as he’ll turn into a vapid pouting narcissist
• Don’t offer him free set of CCTV cameras, but for the inside of his home only
• Don’t steal his diary as it will only ever be full of the things he didn’t do, the girls he didn’t date, the unrealistic resolutions he never kept and blatant lies about the size of his “thingy”
• Don’t pose as an old friend, a new lodger, a complimentary butler or his long-lost wife
• Don’t drug him, steal the info and blame his confusion and wooziness on an alien abduction
• And I definitely won’t make a little hidey-hole for myself in his cupboard, as he lives in a single-roomed bedsit with only one cupboard and it’s usually full to the brim with his dirty undies

All of these techniques come with the risk of being spotted, and once I’ve been spotted, the research is as good as useless because – becoming unnerved and cautious by my presence - Bob may begin to adapt his regular timings and movements, and it’s during his usual routine that his guard is down.

Sadly, at the expense of my surveillance, Bob & I don’t live, work or (owing to a little Eva-based issue) we don’t hang-out together, so my research would need to be more subtle than simply spying on him through eyeholes I’ve cut into a newspaper. So, here’s how I could discretely research my target.

• Watch: even from a distance away, the average person unwittingly gives away a wealth of facts about their daily routine and (as we’ll see in the next section) people are very predictable
• Listen: people love to talk about themselves and especially about the people that they despise
• Read: there’s lots of publicly available data out-there about all of us if you’re willing to dig
• Steal: everybody’s rubbish bin is a veritable (if slightly stained) encyclopaedia of their life

Or, if all of that sounds like a bit of a faff, if you’re not cut-out to be an undercover sleuth and (like me) you’d prefer to do your snooping from your bed, in your PJ’s, with a nice cup of tea and a chocolate Hobnob? There’s one easy and simple option – social media – it’s free, easy and accessible.

Without thinking, the average person uploads every single detail about their boring little life as if they are the most fascinating person in history, when they’re not. Admittedly, being full of narcissists, eight-out-of-every-ten updates features yet another photo of their bloody face, but it also contains details about their friends, family, life, work, habits, hobbies, pubs, clubs and timings, as well as a guided tour of their home, live updates from their holiday – which burglars love as that’s like daubing “I’m away for two weeks, don’t steal too much” across the front of your house - and even the most cautious of people who brag “I never share any personal data online” can’t help but upload a photo themselves with their favourite pet, football strip, a bust of their hero and whilst holding their ‘happy 40th birthday’ cake, so their date of birth and other so-called ‘personal details’ aren’t exactly hard to work out. Oh, and private accounts? Ha! That’s about as inaccessible as opening a tin of beans with a can-opener.

So, understanding the target. What will I learn by spying on Bob? I’ll learn things I already knew, I’ll learn a lot of irrelevant bumph, but I’ll also learn two vital details; his weaknesses and when he’s alone.

Weaknesses. We all have weakness, it’s not a failing, it’s what makes us all so different and human. Some people can run fast, others do a weird waddle. Some are mentally sharp, others forget their own phone number. Some are brave, others think that plummeting from the sky with a bit of fabric to stop your body smacking into the earth so fast your grieving relatives have to scoop you up with a trowel is a stupid idea, and some of ‘the best people in the world’ have only two weaknesses – Eva and Cake – simply lace an Eva-shaped Battenberg with arsenic and I’m as-good-as-dead, but I’ll die a happy man.

The only way I can get away with Bob’s murder is by knowing his weakness, this will allow me to lure him somewhere isolated, lull him into a false sense of security and ensure that I have the advantage.

For example; you wouldn’t poison a loaf if the target had a wheat allergy (unless you planned to make them fart to death), you wouldn’t drown an underwater diver, force-feed the world hot-dog scoffing champion, push a wheelchair bound agoraphobic off the top of Mount Everest, or shoot a lead bullet at a man with a steel plate in his head… although, using a big magnet would be cruel but very amusing.

The little details I can glean from Bob’s life tells me a lot about his weaknesses:

• Bob plays to his music too loud; that tells me he’s sad, lonely and desperate for attention – just look at any car which drives passed with a thumping baseline shaking the street to rubble, does the driver look like a legend or a sad little turd – it also tells me that Bob has hearing-loss having listened to Screaming Owl’s Anus at full volume, so he’ll be easy to sneak up on
• Bob has eczema; itchy, dry and cracked skin which he lubricates hourly, so I could poison his Vaseline, but I couldn’t grab hold of him as he’s as greasy and unmanageable as a really sweaty pig who’s all oiled-up to become a sumo wrestler and is sponsored by Lurpack Butter
• Bob lives on a diet of crap, he has a gold loyalty card from Pizza Schmucks, his blood is 99% choc-mint-chip and he counts donuts as one of his five-a-day (as in his eyes they’re a nut), so either I wait for his heart to resign, or I suffocate him to death while he’s on the loo… his usual grunting, straining and laboured exhale will sound identical to his unfortunate neighbours

I could kill Bob in a multitude of ways which would appear entirely natural given my knowledge of his life, his health and his habits, but he may also have a few phobias I never knew about which could trip me up. Here’s just a few strange phobias which could limit any chosen method of murder:Bathmophobia - a fear of stairs, Belonephobia - a fear of needles, Utophobia - a fear of being alone, Ecophobia, a fear of the home, Koinoniphobia - a fear of rooms, Megalophobia - a fear of large things, Microphobia - small things, Noctiphobia - the night, Scoptophobia - being stared at, Trypophobia - holes, Venustraphobia – a fear of beautiful women (such as Eva) and – two phobias which could scupper my plans - Peladophobia, a fear of bald men and Thanatophobia, a fear of death. Gulp!

These will be a nightmare to discover, but thankfully, the most useful details I need to prep’ for Bob’s impending demise are much easier to research, as – like almost all of us – Bob is a creature of habit.

We all have routines, whether big or small, and regardless of who we are or what we do, our lives are unremittingly humdrum and predictable at various points of the day or night, which rarely change, and are set in place as part of our job, lifestyle, social circle, family life, medical needs, or by habit. For many of us, buying milk not from our local shop but from a different store one-street over is a big deal, but all of our lives are controlled by an innate structure which gives us a sense of stability. Such as:

• Sleep: we all have a usual sleep pattern; some people are solid eight-hour snoozers, some doze during the day, some toss and turn all night, and all dads have a special off-switch inside their belt which causes them to shut-down fully the second that any chores need doing
• Commute: life dictates our schedule; for some it’s a long descent into hell inhaling a flannel-dodger’s armpit, for me it’s a PJ-stumble from bed-to-kettle-to-desk, and for Bob he goes from lying to slouching on the sofa to stooping to scoop-out the TV remote from under his bum
• Food: we all need to eat and our bellies are the world’s most accurate alarm clock; when they rumble, our whole world stops and nothing can restart until they are fed. As for Bob, he eats hourly thanks to a pre-programmed app’ as he’s too lazy to call, speak or even press re-order
• Social life: we post cherry-picked photos on social media to make everyone think our lives are amazing, when really - most of the time - we’re sat on the sofa wearing a stained onesie surfing a TV schedule of utter crap. Admit it, we’re not unlike Bob, the difference is we get up to pee

No-one is truly unpredictable, our lives are flecked with patterns, habits and routines; from the friends we see, the places we go, the times we leave, the hobbies we enjoy, the food we eat, the clothes we wear and even down to speed we reply to some texts but not others, everything we do is predictable.

Admittedly, the bulk of our day is spent queueing, complaining, doodling and bunking-off, with added tea-breaks, bouts of bitching and waffling on about the things we plan to do but never do. Sadly, for me, Bob does nothing, goes nowhere and talks to no-one, which limits my options on how to make his death look natural, as if he’s gorged on a fifty-foot fajita while changing the channel from the Dog Poop Investigators to Celebrity Chef Kung-Fu Karaoke on Ice… but everyone has their weaknesses.

That said, given that in England and Wales there are 7700 deaths a week, only 14 of which are murders, it would look less suspicious if Bob died doing what he loved best or simply slipped away? So, if he dies “naturally”, I could just steal this portrait of the Hollywood Goddess with the Battenberg Fingers?

Life is dangerous and the chance of surviving it is pretty slim. Every year, across the world; 17.7 million people die by heart disease, 9.5 by cancer, 1.24 by car-crash, 295000 by drowning, 270000 by hunger, 193000 giving birth, 120000 by fire, 26000 by terrorism and 9600 by natural disaster. Statistically, we all have a 1 in 180000 chance of being killed by lightning, 1 in 118000 will be mauled by a dog, 1 in 53000 will die by bee-sting, 1 in 7700 by sunstroke and 1 in 2600 will die chocking on their food. And even more bizarrely, 1 in every 15000 people die every year doing exercise, every year 3 million people die owing to obesity, 640 people die each year falling out of bed, 240 people are killed by falling icicles and one person dies every year bouncing on a trampoline. Ironically, with only 26 deaths over the last decade, it’s safer to go skydiving than it is to walk the street, to eat your dinner or to fall asleep.

So, does Bob have role which makes him more likely to “accidentally” expire than most people during his every day duties? Here’s a few possible high-risk occupations which could quicken his demise: a painter as lead-based paints are deadly if consumed using a very large spoon… which he has done before when his fridge was empty, a carpenter but only if he mistakes a plank of wood for his head… which is possible, a chef because of knives and hot things… but that’s unlikely as it involves actually shifting his arse and Bob’s so lazy that a depressed sloth wearing a t-shirt which read ‘bollocks to life’ actually tutted at him for his laziness, so there are loads of high risk occupations – racing driver, scuba diver, arsenic deliver boy, tornado chaser, chainsaw juggler, cliff-based car brakes tester, a freelance trainee bomb disposal technician and food tester for a despotic war-lord – but as Bob does nothing but eat, sleep and watch telly, everything which involves him burning a single calorie is unlikely.

And yet, Bob’s natural lethargy does open a window of deadly opportunities. I’m thinking…

• Health problems: he can’t duck my swinging axe if he has a bad back, he could never hear my chainsaw if he has tinnitus, and how could he dodge my piranha pool if he’s dizzy with vertigo?
• Habitat: let’s be honest, his bathroom is a cesspit, his kitchen should be condemned, his fridge is home to 87 new species of fungus, and his sofa features a perpetual outline of his body as if the Police forensics team has already marked out his body… with chocolate and crisps

• Habits: if he picks his nose, I could always poison the tip of his finger? If he openly sneezes in the street without covering his nose, I could always stuff two ping-pong balls up his nostrils so his head explodes? And if he’s one of those nasty little Herberts who constantly sniffs but refuses to use a hanky, I could strangle him, in public and I’d probably get round of applause

Now I could consider allergies, as a fatal attack of anaphylaxis can be triggered by just the briefest hint of peanuts and sesame seeds, but as Bob has no allergies - except work, energy and effort - thankfully there are some everyday foods which are toxic and deadly to everyone. Such as:

• Cherries, Apples and Elderberries – their hard stones and pips contain prussic acid, also known as cyanide, which even in small doses can cause rapid breathing, seizures and possibly death
• Nutmeg – mixed in small amounts and baked into food, nutmeg is harmless, but even eating just two spoons of raw nutmeg can cause hallucinations, dizziness, confusion and seizures
• Unripe (very green) potatoes contain glycoalkaloid and causes nausea, diarrhea and death
• Rhubarb – the stalks are delicious but the toxic leaves can result in a kidney failure and a coma

Other deadly and toxic food include; bitter almonds, raw cashew nuts, mangoes, unpasteurised honey, castor oil, bean sprouts, cassava, chilli peppers, various mushrooms, the Ackee fruit, the star fruit and the pufferfish, with hot dogs being the number one choking hazard to children under the age of three.

Sadly, Bob has never seen a vegetable… ever, he’s so food-illiterate, he believes that when beef bleeds it bleeds gravy, that meatballs come from male cows and that all chickens are born McNugget-shaped. Admittedly, a single salad leaf could be toxic to his system, but there’s no way he would swallow that.

Which brings us onto the next step, where to kill Bob? I mean, this is entirely pointless, as although statistically most people die at home and the majority die in their own beds, Bob is so lazy that he spends all day on the sofa, and when it comes to beddy-byes, he stays on the sofa as he’s too bone idle to pull-out the bed from under the sofa and fall onto that… as it means getting back up again.

But anyway, if Bob wasn’t the human equivalent of a pot of blancmange, knowing that the best place to murder him is where he was isolated but felt safest, this is where I would choose and avoid:

• Choose desolate places like woods, parks, beaches, lakes and deserts, maybe a golf course, a hummus store, a small private art gallery and any cinemas playing a film starring James Corden
• Avoid busy places like city streets, motorways, bargain sales, and anything fun like pubs, bars, buffets, anything with dogs, anything with free food and any open-air proctological exams
• Choose places of high traffic so any DNA, evidence or fingerprint are useless, such as concerts, war-zones, wrestling matches and any free ‘tasting’ tours of the Mr Kipling cake factory
• Avoid places with CCTV, such as shops, streets, stations and any pervy uncle’s bathroom
• Choose fastidiously clean spots; like hospitals, dentist’s, public toilets or the home of any neat-freak who offers you a sandwich but glares at you every time a single crumb misses the plate

I would also avoid any sewage plants, abattoirs, changing rooms, nudie booths, maternity wards and sperms banks, just because it will look really odd and will have people asking “why there? Weirdo!”

In short, Bob will die at home, on his sofa, where he feels safe, warm and is usually fast-asleep with a trickle of syrupy dribble down his chin and a circle of cast-off Doritos on his chest, which suits me fine. He’ll be home, happy and unaware that he’s going to heaven… which he’ll hate as that means moving.

So, before I go, there’s two steps I need to do to ensure that no-one suspects me. Firstly, I know Bob’s routine – eat, sleep, shit, repeat – his weaknesses and the best place to kill him, but there’s one other person I need to research too – myself. I can’t provide the perfect alibi for myself, unless I know where our lives cross and how I can discretely distance myself from Bob in the days prior to his sad and tragic demise. Boo-hoo-hoo. Luckily, I’m not the pizza delivery guy, who is the only people Bob grunts with.

And secondly, no matter what, I must never photograph, film, internet search or write down anything about Bob’s death, and I must never EVER turn it into a blog or podcast. Oh, bollocks I’ve done it again. What an idiot! Find out how and if I can pull of the perfect murder in part three next week.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Part Two of How To get Away With Murder. This continues for the next two weeks, when your regular Murder Mile episodes will return.

A big thank you to my new Patreon Supporters who are Michael Potter, Marg Tomnay, Cynthia Dahle, Glenda McCarthy and Gavin Cooke, I hope you’re enjoying the secret videos I’m posting this week whilst regular Murder Mile is off-air. And thank you to Kara Langford for your very kind donations via the Murder Mile website. Thank you everyone. Up next is Extra Mile.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

This is a hypothetical exploration into the possibility or impossibility of getting away with murder, which over four episodes covers motivation, methods, surveillance, research, eacape and clear-up, as well as the legal ramifications of planning a murder of a victim called Bob... who is fictional.

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER - PART ONE: UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

Let’s pretend that I’m going to commit a pre-meditated murder; the target is my good friend Bob, the reason is profit, the location in his home and the time scale is the next four weeks. Do you need to call the Police? No, as the murder is hypothetical, the victim is fictional and none of this will ever exist.

But could I kill him? Well, yes, of course. We are all very capable of taking another person’s life. I could easily end Bob’s life in a jiffy by lacing his Pot Noodle with lashings of arsenic, bashing his brain-in with a common house brick, plunging his annoying face into an icy lake, or by stuffing his lazy sweaty bulk in a mincing machine and hitting ‘turbo’ so his bloody chunks spatter up the kitchen wall. Oh joy!

It seems so simple and physically it is, we are all animals after all, but the hard part is to not get caught.

Across this four-part series I shall be carefully planning the hypothetical murder of a fictional character called Bob; in three week’s time he will die and in four week’s time I shall be free and never convicted.

My name is Michael, I am a murderer, and this is How To Get Away With Murder.

Part One: Motivation & Realism.

Murder is moral quandary, simply getting over the emotional hurdle and psychological trauma of even contemplating another person’s death is harder than the physical act of murder itself… but that is the very first step any potential killer needs to consider in order to get away with murder.

In episode two of this four-part series, we shall explore the research phase of a pre-meditated murder, part three explores the best techniques to limit the evidence, in part four we shall dip into the clean-up and escape from the crime-scene to evade capture, but this first part is about the most important but least understood aspect of getting away with a pre-meditated murder – motivation.

Before we begin, what does the average murder look like? Well, I can tell you what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like the majority of cases that any true-crime fan has absorbed before. Such as in: 

• Podcasts: six-part serialisations with sensationally lurid names like ‘Dr Bastard’, ‘Tits, Teeth and Terror’, ‘The Hollywood Shitbag’s Bloody Hotel of Horror’ and ‘The Really Really Nasty Killing Cult’, which are ceaselessly churned out like Wikipedia merged with a sausage maker
• Documentaries: hastily-made shoddily-researched crap for idiots with the IQ of a hot spud, all featuring scary music, large graphics, short soundbites and catchy titles like girls who kill, kids who kill, babies who kill, mad bastards, evil bastards, cruel bastards, killer cats, despotic dogs, the hara-kiri hamster and the marmoset who brought a massacre to Milton Keynes
• TV Dramas and Films: which are preceded by the words ‘based on a true-story’ as well as the all-important caveat of ‘names and details have been changed for dramatization’ meaning that most of what you see will be twaddle they made-up as the truth was too dull to broadcast
• Books: usually another waste-of-paper claiming to expose ‘who jack the Ripper is’ (whether a madman, a copper, a hack, Queen Victoria’s butler, Adolf Hitler’s grandfather or Dennis Nilsen in a time-machine) which morons bafflingly believe as fact because “I read it in a book, so it must be true”, as if each book is fact-checked by a committee of independent experts first
• And crime-zines: garishly-coloured fact-free tabloid-trash for weirdos with the mental age of a boiled egg, who’s only focus is blood, gore and killings, and can only be lured from their kilo bag of Cheesy Dollops by a catch-all phrase in a blood red font like bad, mad, maniac or evil.

Sadly, there’s a big discrepancy between reality and fiction, even if the murder case itself is real. What you see on the telly and hear about in podcasts isn’t typical of most murder cases. They are just a very small selection of the most engaging, compelling and sensational cases deliberately chosen to draw you in. Even the cases you hear about in the news are selectively chosen, as the role of the media is to inform but also to entertain you. They are there to tell you a story, but if the story is dull and mundane, they know they’ve lost you as a viewer or a listener, which they can’t afford to do.

In all honesty, most murder cases are barely - if at all - covered by the press. Why? Because they’re not interesting, yes there’s a murder in them, but there’s no intrigue, no mystery and no angle. A story about an evil doctor murdering a patient for money will have coverage for months and years, where-as a young lad stabbed to death by a rival gang over a pair of trainers will be forgotten about in a day.

Think about it; when was the last time you saw a drama entirely based around the investigation into why two homeless drug addicts stabbed each other to death over a £5 bag of skag, why a drunken yob beat a rival footie fan into a coma having knocked-over his kebab, or why a depressed single-mother with post-natal depression drowned her baby? When? Never. Why? Because they know that most people wouldn’t tune in. What we are consuming isn’t fact, it’s entertainment.

So, what does the average murder look like?

According to the Office of National Statistics, during 2019, in England & Wales (as that is where I live) there were 662 homicides in a population of 56.1 million people, which was broken down like this:

• Motivation: 51% of all homicides resulted from an argument, a loss of temper or a revenge attack, with the proportion higher (64%) where the suspect was known to the victim
• External factors: 31% of homicide victims were under the influence of alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of the homicide, 42% were known drug users and 24% were drug dealers
• Age range: most likely to be victims were children under the age of one, with the second highest proportion being adults aged 25-to-34-year olds (21%), followed by those aged 16-to-24, with the number of victims steadily declining as the age-group got older. That said, the largest reason for homicides amongst the very young and the very old was neglect
• Gender ratio of victims over the age of 16: 66% were classified as male, 34% as female
  • 38% of females were more likely to be killed by a partner or ex-partner, 48% as a result of a domestic homicide and only 8% who were murdered by a friend or acquaintance
  • Where-as only 4% of males were killed by a partner or ex-partner, 8% were due to a domestic homicide, but 27% of male victims were more likely to be killed by a friend
  • Most victims were well-acquainted with their murderer; for females it was 87%, for males it was 78%, with stranger attacks being uncommon in both cases. By ‘stranger’, this means anyone the victim does not have an established relationship with
• Locations: 71% of female victims were likely to be killed in or around the home, compared to 39% of males, with 30% of male homicides occurring in a public place, but only 6% for females

Unlike in TV shows or on podcasts, real murders are rarely premeditated or planned to the extent that the assailant even considers the ramifications of their crime or how they will get away with it. These are crimes of passion, they’re primal, they’re irrational and fuelled by raw uncontrolled emotion.

Emotion is a key part of our personality, it’s what makes us who we are, it defines our character, and every moment of every day we wrestle with a myriad of emotions as that’s how a human being copes with the dilemmas, crises and incidents that life throws at us. Every day our emotions swing from anger to jealousy to lust to rage to greed to pride to hatred to pain to joy to boredom. We cope with issues, we learn from our mistakes and we move on to the next problem. But for some people, something tips them over the edge from being a normal rational person… to being a murderer.

So, even before we discuss the who, the how and where of Bob’s impending but entirely fictional murder, we have to consider the most important detail – why. Why do I want to murder Bob?

It’s a detail that most murderers fail to consider fully, as their actions are clouded by emotion, so as the red mist kicks in, their fists clench and their eyes widen, before they even know what they’ve done, someone is dead. But let’s explore some bizarre but common motivations for murder.

• In 2011, Robert Lyons murdered his mother as she refused to buy him tickets to Avril Lavigne
• In 1994, Dana Sue Gray killed three elderly ladies to support her shopping addiction.
• Jenelle Potter convinced her father and boyfriend to kill a couple she had been feuding with and had subsequently been befriended by on Facebook
• 16-year-old boastful teen Joshua Davies beat his girlfriend to death with a rock after his friend jokingly said he would buy him breakfast if he killed her, like he claimed he would
• In Singapore, 19-year-old Tan Teck Soon pushed his girlfriend off a 12-story building after an argument about chopsticks, he then jumped after her… and miraculously he survived
• And 36-year-old Fergus Glen was so mad that his brother didn’t thank him for making dinner, that he used an axe to hack him to death

These may seem extreme, but they’re no more extreme than the very ordinary and everyday cases we’ve covered in Murder Mile. So, if we set aside the serial-killers for a second, consider this:

• Episode 16 – Richard Rhodes Henley, he killed a man because of his addiction to pornography

• Episode 1 – The Denmark Place Fire, he killed 37 people having been overcharged for a drink
• Episode 39 - George Pickering murdered his favourite sex-worker as he couldn’t kill himself
• Episode 42 - David West Jnr murdered his father (not for money but) because he was bullied
• Episode 71 – Mary Ann Moriarty killed her abusive husband to protect herself and her children
• Episode 62 – The Rosendale Murders, one man was murdered in a nightclub because of a look

We hear about it in the newspapers all the time, that someone was murdered because of a misheard word, an unappreciated look, a perceived slight or unwanted attention. It could occur over something so insignificant, most of us wouldn’t consider it reason to kill, let alone a reason to argue or tut.

Of course, there can be good reasons to kill; whether fighting for your country, serving in the line of duty, or protecting a loved one, yourself or others from danger? The vast majority of people don’t kill for the sake of killing, in truth, most people who become murderers just snap. Like that! And, let’s not forget that mental health problems can also play a big part.

So, why should I kill Bob?

I mean the reasons are limitless; he’s rude, he’s smelly, he never says “please”, he thinks his jokes are funny, he borrows money but never repays, he dashes out the second the bill arrives, he clips his toe-nails while watching TV, he flicks his bogies, he leaves his dirty dishes next to an open dishwasher, he buys himself a cakey-treat but not me, and cleans out the filthy from between of his toes with his sock.

Yuck! Surely that’s motivation enough? If I was the judge? Yes, but not in this case, as this isn’t a crime-of-passion, this is a premeditated murder for profit, which I intend to get away with.

So, here’s some possible motives for a premeditated murder for profit:

• Money; without it we can’t eat, sleep or live, and although most people only need enough to be happy or survive, for some enough is never enough. Sadly, Bob is broke, so no joy there
• Property; always a bone of contention between next-of-kin as it’s impossible to split a building between all of the parties, but as Bob is not family and he rents a grim little bedsit… that’s out
• Business; for many, work is everything, life is nothing and any rivalry is worth killing over, even if your vast business empire only makes those little yellow rubbery duckies for bath-time fun. Believe me, it does happen, but as Bob is currently unemployed, his kingdom is not an issue
• Relationships; instead of simply saying “bye-bye” or getting a legal paper to state “my ex is a bell-end, I never want to see them again”, some people become Henry VIII and use an axe to end it. Sadly, Bob isn’t family, he has no next-of-kin and - just so you know – I didn’t kill them
• And, of course, there’s Pride; for some deluded souls, honour is worth killing over but as Bob has no pride – he barely has hygiene – we’ll let that one slip, like the turds he never flushes

These are the top five motivations for a pre-meditated murder with a few others notable reasons close behind; such as status, territory, legal issues, personal disputes, a rite of passage and the erasing of a mistake, to name but a few. But my reason to kill Bob is a lot more personal, as is what I shall gain.

Bob’s most prized possession – which I want – is a signed portrait of my beloved (if fictional) girlfriend Eva Green holding a Belgian Bun and eating a Battenberg Cake. And although he constantly taunts me with it, every day and in my dreams, he rightfully covets it with his life. To you, this may seem like a bit of meaningless tatt hardly worth killing over, but to me, I see nothing else but this. And in every murder, even those which are well-planned, the prospective killer’s judgement, morals and ethics are clouded by a single-minded need to attain what they cherish the most… and this is mine.

So, if this cakey-photo of beautiful Eva is my goal, why kill Bob? Why not negotiate with him first?

This is the first stumbling block in many situations, including murder, as an amicable solution could be achieved by talking, listening, asking, understanding and (as galling as it may be) by apologising. These are very simple steps which all of us could take, but again, our needs and emotions gets in the way.

So, for sake of this fictitious beef with my imaginary chum over a cakey doodle of a Hollywood goddess (drool, drool, swoon), let’s assume I’ve tried every option… but Bob said “no”. Ooh what a git. Can you feel my anger rising? I’m shaking my fist and cursing the day he was born (which was a Tuesday). And I’m so furious, I’ve even used some blue words like ‘rogue’, ‘scallywag’ and ‘c**t’. Sorry, I’ve no middle ground when it comes to curse-words. You should hear me order a cup of tea? Filthy boy.

Right! I have a good reason to kill Bob, but how easy will it be to actually kill him? In truth, it’s going to somewhere between very difficult and almost impossible. Why? Because I’m not a killer. I’ve seen it depicted in films, I’ve heard about in on podcasts and I’ve read about it in books, but I have never ended another person’s life and – like almost all of us - I probably never will. My experience is zero.

Am I up to it? Probably not. Murder is not easy.

• The vast majority of us physically could but would never kill, because we know it’s wrong. It goes against our nature, morals, ethics and - even if we’re not religious - we all know it’s a sin.
• Death is part of our lives, especially if you eat meat. Now many of us love a bacon sandwich (yummy), but if we were asked to kill the pig ourselves first, most of us would say no.
• Even for those trained to defend and to kill, when veterans were questioned after World War Two, the Korean and Vietnam wars, many admitted that 30-40% of their shots were aimed above the enemy’s heads, to scare them or cause them to retreat, and they only fired directly at the enemy when their life was in danger. It’s a very human instinct to NOT kill, as these aren’t a faceless enemy, these are real people with friends, families, partners and children
• Murders are very personal; it takes a physical and unnatural act on your behalf to initiate it, whether your using a body part (like a fist), a household object or a pre-determined weapon? You may be in a place that both of you know (like a home)? If you know them, their last words may be your name? And you will most likely witness their last moments alive and their death?
• Could I do that? Probably not. Given that (like most of us) I delicately move spiders out of my home with glass and a bit of paper, I usher wasps away with a wavy hand, I scowl at anyone who mistreats a pet, and every time I’m walking and hear a crunch under foot, I always feel a pang of guilt knowing I’ve crushed a snail. Do I know the snail, his life, his family, his hopes and his dreams, as after all it is only a snail? No. So, how could I be expected to kill a human?

Luckily Bob isn’t real, he’s a fictional character created for a hypothetical scenario which results in his bloody and hopefully amusing death. Besides, even if he was alive, I don’t think anyone could logically consider him as a human, as Bob doesn’t like strawberry Angel Delight, he prefers butterscotch. Yuck!

The physical act of murder isn’t the hardest part, and neither is the planning, it’s the psychological trauma which comes with it… not just before and during, but days, months and even years afterwards.

Killing is next-to-impossible to do in a calm and rational way. Serial killers are uniquely able to do this as they have a distinct lack of empathy for their victims. Killing isn’t an emotional experience for them, it’s about a different type of need or loss; for Dennis Nilsen it was rejection, Harold Shipman had a misguided God complex, for Ian Brady it was about control, for Reg Christie it was to be desired, for Gordon Cummins he had sadistic urges to quell and for John George Haigh it was always about money.

Serial-killers are selfish, arrogant and obsessive, they have an ability to be calm and calculating in a way that no-one else can and that is why they often (but not always) get away with murder. So, in order to achieve my goal, I need to become unemotional, calculated, calm and callous. But can I?

Can I deal with the emotional and psychological trauma with comes with murder? The second I murder, or attempt to murder Bob, even if I go get away with it and am rewarded with this thing that I cherish the most; his life, my life and the lives of everyone we both know will be changed forever.

• The Moment: every detail of Bob’s last moments alive will be burned into my memory; his face, his clothes, his final words, his last breath, the way his body fell, the sights, the sounds, the smells and throughout my life everyday objects will trigger reminders of Bob, who I killed
• The Guilt: to ensure that I evade capture, once Bob is dead, there will be many details about his death which I must keep a secret, including where he is, why he’s missing, how he died, why he died and where he is buried, details which could bring closure to his loved one’s
• Reminders: given that Bob & I were friends, the calendars of everyone we are associated with will be filled with birthdays, anniversaries and reminders of what was, or could have been, and – of course – I would need to attend the funeral, the wake, or neither if he’s never found
• Tainted Items: everything associated with Bob and his murder will be tinged with his death; the location, the time, the date, colours, textures, smells, words, music, food and clothing, even the sexy artwork of Eva clutching two pieces of cakey-heaven would be sullied forever
• Suspicion: even if I’m found not guilty, will friends call, will family visit and will lovers still want to feel my touch? What about promotions and invitations, will colleagues seek me out or cross the street to avoid me? And will anyone be able to mention murder or Bob in my presence?
• My Name: in every medium, my name will be associated (not with the many good deeds I’ve done like charity, kindness and not having kids but) that one moment of weakness. Consider this: when I say OJ Simpson, do you think of the footballer, the film star, or the murderer?
• And finally, the Date and Time: unlike shoplifting or fraud which can vanish society’s memory as quickly as its printed in a newspaper, murder lingers for years and even decades, which is why almost everyone can recall where there were when JFK was assassinated, or on 9/11?

To get away with murder, I need to be cold and callous, which isn’t easy as our emotional responses to stress are hard-wired into our brains. And even if I could cope, I’m already screwed by the many interactions I’ve already had with Bob in the days, months and years before my hatred had formed.

In almost every premeditated murder, the victim and perpetrator will have a long-established history together which leaves a detailed trail charting the highs and lows of their connection. For example:

• Texts: without thinking, both of our devices are full of rude texts, crude gifs, snippy retorts and curt replies that we’ve unthinkingly whizzed to each other with fewer smiley faces, kisses and LOLs, which seems trivial but even these tiny details show the decline in the relationship
• Phone Calls: details on times, dates, places, frequency and length are all stored by the network for up-to-one year in the UK and much longer on the device and Sim Card itself, with voicemail messages kept on the phone for an indeterminate period of time at the owner’s discretion
• Social Media: whether tweets, blogs, vlogs, photos, videos or memes, even if you delete it, it’s still recoverable and once it’s out there, you have no idea who has copied or shared it
• Cards: all of us have cards for shopping, saving, spending, travel, loyalty, petrol, toll-booths, libraries, gift vouchers, phone calls, coffee and entertainment, everything which is important to our routines requires a card, and every card stores information on us and our lives
• CCTV: there are an estimated 5 million private and public CCTV cameras in the UK, so excluding any personal devices which may unwittingly capture your image or voice, the average person is caught on camera between 75 and 300 times a day, whether you know it or not
• GPS & Data Logs: it’s everywhere, it’s on your phone, car, wrist and ears; anything designed to track you, to guide you, to call from, to record with and any device with WIFI whether games consoles, music players and televisions, they track where you are and what you’ve done
• Written Records: without documents we don’t exist, and any change to our passport, driving licence, utility bills, medical chart, criminal record, electoral roll, tax return, wage slip, personal emails, financial history, legal status or insurance needs, every change tells a story
• Witnesses: police rely heavily on eye-witness statements, so how can you be sure what others can recall about what you said or did; whether snide jokes, glib comments, spats, fights or angry phrases like “I’m kill you”, which we don’t mean, but on paper it doesn’t look good

What if things have already got heated? There may be legal letters, police reports, secret diaries, lists of abuse, documented sightings and worst of all death threats. My trail will be extensive, as will Bob’s.

I could try to delete it all, but it would be futile, it would take a lifetime and everyone – from friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, police detectives and even Bob himself – would want to know why?

Admit it! I am the worst person to even attempt to try and get away with Bob’s murder. I’m neither physically, mentally or psychological capable; my motive is weak, my experience is zero, my planning hasn’t begun, I left a trail charting the decline in our relationship (from years before the murder has taken place) and – even worse than that – I am a true-crime podcaster who has recorded a four-part series called How To Get Away With Murder in which I explain how I’m going to kill Bob. I am an idiot.

And let’s not forget, simply by planning and rehearsing Bob’s murder, I won’t just be breaking one law, there are loads of smaller crimes I will have to commit in order to get that far: Such as:  

• Surveillance: it’s not illegal in the UK to film another person without their consent unless those images are used for criminal purposes, so sentencing is dependent on the crime
• Lying: if I ‘pervert the course of justice’, I could serve up to one year in prison
• Theft: depending on what I steal of Bob’s, I could serve up to seven years
• Stalking warrants anything from fine to 8 years in prison
• Possession of a knife: a fine or up to 2 ½ years in prison
• Possession of an offensive weapon: a maximum of four years
• Domestic burglary: a community order up to 6 years in prison with a maximum of 14 years
• Kidnapping or attempted kidnapping: anywhere from 6 months to 6 years
• Common assault: 6 months to 2 years, with GBH resulting in up to 5 years
• Conspiracy to commit murder: 7 to 15 years in prison
• Attempted murder (depending on the severity): 10 to 30 years in prison
• Murder: a minimum life sentence of 15-20 years, up to a whole life tariff for the most serious  

All of which (if I’m caught and convicted) could severely ruin my life, as I would become a criminal. 

So, before I’ve taken a single step to even plan Bob’s murder – way before I’ve casually flicked through a catalogue of industrial mincers, cherry-picked a strong enough acid to dissolve his flabby butt, or chosen a spot in my love-shrine for that much-coveted portrait of Eva munching on fistfuls of cakey-goodness (mmm) - the chance of me actually getting away with murder… is slim… very slim… which is why I need understand my target, his life and his routines. Find out how in Part Two.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Part One of How To get Away With Murder. This continues for the next three weeks, when your regular Murder Mile episodes will return, once I’ve finished the research.

A big thank you to my new Patreon Supporters who are Anne-Marie Montgomery, Penny Richardson, Campbell Welsh and Sarah Cameron. As there’s no regular episodes this week, I’ll be posting you some interesting videos to keep you entertained. Up next is Extra Mile and a very special announcement.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

MUSIC: 

• Blind Dogs for Guides by Cult With No Name (Credits)
• Low on High by Cult With No Name
• No News by Cult With No Name
• Fingertips by Cult With No Name
• Outro by Inflammator
• She Sells Incels by Cult With No Name

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

This is a photo of 24 Sydney Road in Teddington, which was the former home of Alfred Charles Whiteway, and just three doors down, nine years earlier, the Songhurst family lived.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND NINE:
Across May & June 1953, a violent serial rapist who would attack lone women in isolated spots in and around Teddington, and yet, going against his own method, that same man would rape and murder two young girls at the same time. But why?

• Date: 26th May to 17th June 1953
• Location: Teddington Lock, Oxshott Heath and Windsor Great Park
• Victims: 4 (Barbara Songhurst, Christine Rose Reed, Patricia Birch and Kathleen Ringham)
• Culprits: 1 (Alfred Charles Whiteway)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

Access the blog to Parts One and Two of the Thames Towpath Murder, subscribe via Patreon or listen to more than 300 episodes of Murder Mile UK True Crime via the Podcast page

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of Sandy Lane where Alfed Whiteway was initially picked-up by the Police and questioned over the murders of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed is located where the black triangle is, on the far left of the screen. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's two videos to go with this week's episode; on the left is the "grassy-slope" at Teddington Lock where the bodies of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed were disposed of in the river, and on the right is Alfred Whiteway's former home at 24 Sydney Road in Teddington. These videos are a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES:
This case was researched using the original declassified polcie investigation files held at the National Archives, as well as many other sources.

• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9206486
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11246317
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11021923
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9206486

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Maestro Tlakaelel by Jesse Gallagher
• Haunting Piece (unreleased) by Cult With No Name
  
• Horror House by Aaron Kenny
• Kiss the Sky by Aakash Ghandi
• Gaia in the Fog by Dan Boden
• Nothing by Kai Engel
• Leoforos Alexandras by Dan Boden
• Visum by Kai Engel

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about the hunt for the Thames Towpath Murderer; a violent serial rapist who attacked lone women in isolated spots in and around Teddington, and yet, going against his own method, he would rape and murder two young girls at the same time. But why?

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 109: The Thames Towpath Murders – Part Three: The Suspect.

Today I’m standing on Sandy Lane in Surrey; fifteen miles south-east of the rape of Patricia Birch in Windsor Great Park, eight miles south of the double murder of Barbara Songhurst & Christine Reed at Teddington Lock, one road north of the rape of 14-year-old Kathleen Ringham on Oxshott Heath, and just a few feet from the spot where Police would pick-up a possible suspect for all three attacks.

Sandy Lane isn’t famous, vital or even a place of historical importance to the tourists or locals alike. In truth, it’s little more than a two-laned tree-lined country road with no footpath connecting the A244 on the north-east corner of Oxshott Heath to another insignificant little spot called Miles Lane.

Being posh, secluded and selective about who they let live here, Sandy Lane is encircled by country houses, golf courses and a tennis club, but strictly no shops; as shops mean visitors, visitors mean riff-raff, and riff-raff means an infestation of poor people all dressed in track-suits who take selfies outside of a brick-built tax-dodge and wolf down fistfuls of McFood into the McMouth of their McBastard.

In fact, except for a few furious curtain-twitchers yelling at any passers-by to “get back to your council tenement”, the only other people you’ll see here are walkers dressed in mountain gear to dawdle on the heath, builder’s dumping the debris they can’t be bothered to take to a tip, doggers doing ‘blowie Morse code’ with their headlights, and occasionally a stockbroker dumping the body of a golf rival.

There’s not much to see or do and very few reasons to be here. There’s the heath, a small train station and a single road in the middle of the woods. It’s so remote you can only get here by train, car or bike. But why would you want to, unless you were fleeing a rape scene and seeking another victim?

As it was here, on Wednesday 17th June 1953, at roughly 6:30pm, that a very plausible suspect for all three attacks was caught, and yet the Police (almost) let him slip through their fingers. (Interstitial)

(Police) “28th June 1953, 4:30pm, statement by Alfred Charles Whiteway”.

(Alfred) “Three weeks ago, I went for a ride on my cycle to see a friend in Englefield Green. I couldn’t see her, so I went to Windsor Great Park. As I was cycling along one of the footpaths, I saw a woman coming towards me, she smiled, said “good morning” and for some reason, I turned and followed her. I grabbed hold of her. I asked her to go in the bushes with me but she refused and struggled to get away. She talked me out of it and offered me about 17 shillings. I jumped on my cycle and rode away”.

In his statement, Alfred conveniently forgot a few key details; like how he perched his blue bike by the park gate so he could seek-out lone females, why his saddlebag contained a seven-inch sheath knife and a foot-and-a-half long axe, how he stalked her up an isolated path, dazed her with the axe’s blunt curved butt, dragged her into a dense thicket, strangled her, raped her, stole her money and fled. It was a brazen attack in broad daylight, but to him, she was just a stranger who meant nothing, but sex. 

Patricia Birch gave the Police a detailed description of the attacker; “young, dark-haired, spotty with a cleft chin, rode a blue bike with white mudguards and a black saddlebag, he was scruffy-looking like he’d come off a building site and wore a crumpled blue-shirt, green gaberdine trousers, brown leather gloves and brown crepe-soled shoes” which matched a photofit of the Thames Towpath Murderer.

By then, Alfred had fled… but having already raped once that day, and with his insatiable sexual lust clouding his every thought, he cycled a further fifteen miles south-east to Oxshott Heath to rape again.

Spotted by two builders (“you know what, that looks a lot like Alf”), the Police were called, the suspect was identified and at 6:30pm Constables Oliver & Howard spotted the young man walking down Sandy Lane; a dark and isolated country road, lined with a dense thicket of trees, and no-one else in sight.

(PC) “What’s your name son?”, (Alfred) “Alfred Whiteway”, which was true. (PC) “Address?”, (Alfred) “24 Sydney Road in Teddington”, which was true.  (PC) “Empty your pockets”, which he did, but they only found ten shillings and two bike clips. (PC) “So where’s your bike?”, (Alfred) “I left it at home”, which was a lie as he’d stashed it in the bushes with his saddlebag. (PC) “You got a bag?”, (Alfred) “Nah, just what I got”. Had the officers searched him then, instead of later at the Police station, down his left leg they would have spotted a twenty-inch axe, still flecked with the blood of four women and with one more victim to add, as he lay-in-wait on Sandy Lane for another lone female. But they didn’t.

Driven in the Police’s black Wolseley Saloon, Alfred was calm, pleasant and feigned a genuine interest in cars, as with the axe in his hand, he leaned forward to get a better look at the speedometer, (Alfred) “and as I was chatting to the copper, watching him in the mirror, I pushed it under the driver’s seat”.

At roughly 7pm, at Kingston Police Station, Detective Inspector Brammell dismissed the spotty youth as a viable suspect and Alfred Charles Whiteway – the Thames Towpath Murderer – walked free.

So, how did such a violent and dangerous predator slip under the Police radar?

Alfred Charles Whiteway was born in Teddington on 21st June 1931. As the middle-child of eight - with two older brothers, three older sisters and two younger sisters, with one sister mentally disabled, one brother crippled by shell-shock, their father unable to work as a labourer owing to terminal cancer and their frazzled mother ran ragged by too many chores and so little money - being crammed into three small rooms in a tiny council flat on a scruffy dead-end at 24 Sydney Road, Alfred slept on the kitchen floor which he shared with Uncle Charles. Life was chaotic, impoverished and undisciplined.

Educated at the nearby Stanley Road School, Alfred known as ‘Alf’ was described as a bully with an above average intelligence, who found it difficult to focus on anything but money, knives and girls.

As a scrawny jug-eared youth with a spotty face and a cleft-chin, Alfred wasn’t a hit with the girls. Even as he lifted weights to become a lean yet powerfully built teen, being burdened by a bad attitude and a habit of forcing himself on a female which he called “seducing”, he lost his virginity early and never lost his appetite for sex. (Alfred) “I’d go any distance to get a bit from a girl who hadn’t had it before”.

Alfred believed that rather than earning it, he had the right to take whatever he desired. On 4th June 1943, he was fined £5 and bound-over for stealing torches from a house - he was 11 years old. Three months later, aged 12, he stole a ladies’ purse, but was too young to be effectively punished.

Quitting school, he struggled to stay employed as an errand-boy, a paint-sprayer and a coal-loader for more than a few months. And charged with stealing a bicycle, aged 15, Alfred was sent to the Cotswold Approved School; a borstal for young boys with emotional and behavioural problems. Described as “angry and difficult”, Alfred was rude, unruly and violent, he was obsessed with knives, fixated by sex, cruel to animals and was sexually aggressive towards the female teachers. On 22nd July 1948, having absconded from the school for a third time, aged 17 (and therefore an adult), being found guilty of the theft of a pair of gloves, Alfred was dismissed from borstal and sentenced to one year in prison.

Discharged on 23rd March 1949, Alfred was given a chance to go straight or risk a lifetime inside. Having dreamed of earning an honest wage, learning a skill and seeing the world, like many of his pals who had enlisted, Alfred applied for National Service. He was young, strong and physically fit, but being so short-sighted he could barely read, let alone spot a relative from across the street, having flatly refused to wear glasses, he was declared unfit to serve and returned home with his pride severely dented.

For the next three years, he drifted between temporary jobs whether by unloading vans, building walls or chopping down trees, and his love life was no better. Being single, it still stung that his ex-girlfriend (June Knight) had married Danny Songhurst; the eldest son of Gertrude & Daniel and the brother of their middle-child Barbara, who (until a few years earlier) had lived on Sydney Road, just three doors down from Alfred Whiteway. But his luck would soon change when he met and fell in love with Nellie.

In April 1951, 16-year-old Nellie May Jones and her friend Dianne Isaacs went to Bushy Park; a Royal Park over the river which borders Teddington, Hampton Hill and the Thames towpath. Covering 1100 acres of rutting deer, paddling ponds, dense woods and meandering paths, it’s a popular place where kids feel safe and was large enough to still feel peaceful as the two young girls played on the swings.

Being perched on his blue bike, 20-year-old Alfred spied-on the two girls as they paddled in the pond. Only he didn’t speak to them, he didn’t approach them, instead he just watched, waited and (hours later) he followed them through the park, over the river and up the towpath, a full mile to their homes.

By 10pm, unnerved by the stranger pushing his bike slowly behind them, as the girls snuck up a dark unlit alley at the back of their homes on the Lower King’s Road, as Dianne darted into number 13, it was only when Nellie was by herself, with her exit blocked by a dead-end, that Alfred made his move.

(Alfred) “It’s okay, don’t be afraid, I just wanted to talk to you”. And although an odd approach, having found him to be shy, charming and a little bit dishy; they talked for ten minutes, he asked her out on a date, their relationship blossomed and four months later he asked her to marry him.

It was a whirlwind romance for the two young lovers… but it wouldn’t be easy.

Aged just 16 and too young to legally wed, Nellie’s recently-widowed mother had refused to give them her blessing, and for good reason – Alfred was unemployed, impolite and a convicted thief - she didn’t like him, she didn’t trust him and she didn’t let him into their house at 11 Lower King’s Road.

So, in a pique of teenage petulance - with their intimate relations limited to a few fumblings in Bushy Park, some sticky trysts on the towpath, or (rebelliously) sex up the alley behind her mother’s house - to force her hand, Nellie & Alfred got pregnant. On 27th February 1952, they married and on 20th May baby Christina was born, only as (Nellie’s mother had warned her) Alfred wasn’t there to provide for his wife and child, as at the time of the birth, he was serving six months in prison for theft and burglary.

Upon his release, unable to afford a home, the couple lived apart. Feeling disconnected, their fights grew more frequent. Spending more time alone, instead of working every hour to feed his family, he would bunk-off to Old Ham Lock to practice throwing his knife and axe at a tree. And with one baby born and a second due in two months, his insatiable demands for sex was proving harder to assuage.

Alfred Charles Whiteway wasn’t a crazed homicidal maniac with a string of assaults, rapes and murders in his wake. At worst, he was little more than a trouble youth, a bad parent and a very selfish boy, who (like many young men) had a odd fixation with knives and sex, but he wasn’t a killer…

…and yet, just one week later, on the Thames towpath, two young girls would be raped and murdered.

His first known attack was on Sunday 24th May 1953; nine days before the Queen’s Coronation, three weeks before the rape of Patricia Birch, and one week before the double murder of two best-friends. But there would be enough similarity to suggest a link for Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan.

At 10:30am, 14-year-old Kathleen Ringham went for a walk with her dog on Oxshott Heath. She would state “I saw a man on a blue bike with a blue shirt go by. As I got to an isolated path, I heard a bicycle behind me. I felt a blow on the back of my head, I was dazed and dragged into the bushes. He said it would be alright and that he was going to do me. I struggled to fight him off. He pulled up my blouse and pulled off my shorts, and then before he put his person inside me, he asked me how old I was, I said I was fourteen. I did not scream as it was a lonely spot and I was worried he would put his hands around my throat again. After he got off, I tried to get up but I felt dizzy and my head was hurting”.

With a pain in her head and blood in her eyes, Kathleen gave a vivid description of her attacker, whose spotty face, blue bike, brown gloves, black saddlebag, crepe-soled shoes and twenty-inch long yellow and black axe would later prove a positive match to the attack – one month later - on Patricia Birch.

Evidence was slim, no name was given and Police knew of no-known suspect who matched this very unique attacker, so ultimately the investigation stalled. And although Detective Inspector Brammell had mistakenly released a credible suspect who had no prior convictions for rape or assault, detectives had already began questioning Alfred Charles Whiteway in connection with the rapes of Kathleen Ringham, Patricia Birch and the double rapes and murders of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed.

But by then, one very crucial piece of evidence had gone missing.

(Police) “28th June 1953, 4:30pm, statement by Alfred Charles Whiteway”.

(Alfred) “Three weeks ago, I went for a ride on my cycle to see a friend in Englefield Green. I couldn’t see her, so I went to Windsor Great Park. As I was cycling along one of the footpaths, I saw a woman coming towards me, for some reason, I followed her, I grabbed hold of her. I asked her to go in the bushes with me but she refused. She talked me out of it, offered me 17 shillings and I rode away”.

Although deliberately misleading, in that statement Alfred admitted to the minor offence of robbery, and not rape, but having been positively identified by Kathleen and Patricia, the Police had enough evidence to detain and question him, whilst all three cases were investigated.

(Police) “29th June 1953, I am Detective Constable Virgo of Richmond CID. On the night of Sunday 31st May, two girls were murdered on the Teddington Lock towpath. Where were you at the time?”.

In a statement backed-up by his wife, Alfred denied any connection to the murders. At that time “I was with my wife and child in Canbury Gardens until gone 11:30pm”, one mile south of the crime-scene. “I didn’t go near Teddington Lock. I rarely do. I cycle home by Kingston Bridge”, a longer route which avoids the towpath, and “I didn’t stop, I went straight home and got in about five to twelve, as seen by my Uncle Charles”. And although he admitted he knew Barbara, “they lived in our road years ago, Barbara was about six, but I haven’t seen her since and I don’t know Christine”, which was true.

With no axe, knife or witnesses, Alfred knew the murders couldn’t be pinned on him. But then again, he hadn’t met Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan; a highly-experienced Police interrogator and investigator who was smart, cunning and (worst of all) devious.

(Hannan) “1st July 1953, 12:10pm. I am Detective Superintendent Hannan enquiring into the murders of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed, I want to ask you a few questions”, but Alfred wasn’t playing ball “Nah, I’m keeping my mouth shut otherwise you’ll bloody pin it on me. I had nothing to do with them girls. You know I’d go any distance to get a bit from a girl who hadn’t had it before, but I’d never go that far”. But Hannan knew he had, he just needed to prove it, but this was proving fruitless.

Having taken blood and saliva samples, although a search of Alfred’s home uncovered the blue bike, the brown gloves, the crepe-soled shoes and the black saddlebag, no knife or axe was found.

In fact, having hidden it under the driver’s seat of the police car, the axe had since gone missing.

On 8th July, with Alfred Whiteway formerly charged over the rapes of Patricia and Kathleen, as he awaited his sentence, Hannan had more time to question him, and more chances to make him slip.

Hannan’s questions were nothing interesting, just a series of dull questions about Alfred’s routines.

Questioned about his route to and from his wife’s house (Alfred) “sometimes I ride along the towpath and over lock bridge”, his obsession with knives “I keep some in my saddlebag for throwing at trees”, the knives’ blades “it’s a twelve-inch Ghurkha knife and an eight-inch sheath knife”, his route to the trees at Old Ham Lock, “I cycle over Kingston footbridge and passed my swimming place by Teddington Lock. I know that bit of the towpath well”, and as he nervously gabbled with the devious detective, Alfred even admitted that the last time he could recall throwing his twenty-inch black-and-yellow axe at a tree - was at Old Ham Lock, where the two girls were last seen, a few hours before their murders.

Hannan was compiling a confession, but he needed something concrete.

On 15th July, the same day that Alfred pleaded ‘guilty’ at The Old Bailey to the rape of Patricia Birch and Kathleen Ringham, Constable Arthur Cosh of Kingston police station made a startling realisation.

While cleaning-out a black Wolseley Saloon before his shift, under the driver’s seat, he found an axe, but instead of handing it in, he took it home and used it to chop up firewood on the concrete floor. Three weeks later, realising its significance, PC Cosh handed the axe to Detective Hannan. But by that point; any fingerprints were missing, any blood traces were gone, the blade was blunt and - although the curved butt exactly matched the wounds to the girls’ heads – it was inadmissible as evidence.

Without it, the entire case would collapse, unless Hannan could secure a confession from the killer.

Alfred Whiteway was now a convicted rapist, and although his statements were shaky and the physical evidence was weak, there was no way Hannan would let him walk free on a technicality. So, what he did next was highly unethical. But then again, Detective Herbert Hannan, ‘the Policeman’s Policeman’ was a man who would drain a three-mile stretch of the River Thames to find a single little girl, and as he would later state “sometimes, you have to go beyond what it right, to see justice done”.

On 30th July 1953, having repeatedly interviewed his heavily-pregnant wife, as much to fact-check his lies as to get under Alfred’s skin, Hannan showed his evidence. First, the Ghurkha knife that Police had dredged out of Old Ham Lock, at which Alfred barely blinked (Alfred) “oh, you got it out of the water, did you?”. Second, Alfred’s bloodstained shoe which was too faint to group, a tiny detail that Hannan failed to mention, and as he turned pale and trembled, Alfred spluttered “you know bloody well it was me, don’t you?”. At which, thinking this key piece of evidence was lost forever, Hannan thudded onto the table - the axe - it was inadmissible in a court of law, but Alfred didn’t know that. (Alfred) “It’s all up. You bloody know well I done it! That’s buggered me. I can’t stop myself. I must have a woman. I didn’t mean to kill them. I never wanted to hurt anyone”. And with that, Hannan had his confession.

Alfred Charles Whiteway was charged with the murders of Barbara Songhurst & Christine Reed. Tried at the Old Bailey, he denied all charges and stated that the Police had fabricated his statement. But with a unanimous jury finding him guilty, on 23rd December 1953 he was hung at Wandsworth Prison.

A killer was dead, streets would be safe and (as he had promised) justice had returned to Teddington, but several details about the attack still bothered Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan.

Alfred Whiteway was a serial rapist who attacked lone females in dark isolated spots; his motive was sex, his victims were strangers, he felt no anger towards them only lust and his method of attack never deviated. Chosen at random; each girl was spotted, stalked, struck, dazed, dragged, stripped, raped and – although bloodied and traumatised – all of them were left alive… except Barbara and Christine.

But why? Why rape and murder two young girls at the same time? What if one screamed, or got away?

The truest words that Alfred ever stated was during his confession, he said “I didn’t mean to kill them, I never wanted to hurt anyone”. And yet - for whatever reason – something drove him to kill.
Sunday 31st May 1953 was a glorious sunny day, perfect for a little riverside picnic for two best-friends and their pals. But for Nellie & Alfred, married-life had soured, and as they strolled through Canbury Park - with one baby wailing, a second baby due, no home, no job and their fights becoming more frequent - although they kissed and made-up, at 11pm Alfred cycled-away to make his way home.

He wasn’t angry or upset, but as the couple’s sex-life had stalled, his ever-insatiable urges lay unsated.

At 11:10pm, having cycled one mile north to the Kingston footbridge, “I know that bit of the towpath well”; with moonless sky all dark and cloudy, occasionally spotting a lone female cycling by the dense thicket at Teddington Lock, his urges stirred. “You know I’d go any distance to get a bit from a girl who hadn’t had it before”. Hiding behind a tree, Alfred waited; his bike hidden, his bag stashed, his axe in his hand and an erection in his pants. “I can’t stop myself. I must have a woman”. He didn’t care who, a stranger’s a stranger, and being used to taking whatever he desired, all they meant to him was sex.

The lock was the perfect place for a rapist to lurk… but not one with bad eyesight, who was so short-sighted he could barely read or spot a relative across the street, and was too proud to wear glasses.

At 11:15pm, as Barbara & Christine left the picnic at Petersham Meadows and cycled south passed Old Ham Lock, their rickety bikes clattered down the dark uneven towpath as the girls rode in tandem. Barely illuminated by the single yellowy bike-light she had borrowed, Barbara cycled ahead, singing as she often did, as (unlit owing to a broken bulb) a slightly shyer Christine meekly followed behind her.

Fifteen minutes later, as Alfred lay in wait, hidden by a tree; his eyes saw only one bike-light, not two, his ears heard one voice singing, not two, and thinking she was a lone female - with the curved blunt butt of his axe – Alfred struck and knocked Barbara clean off her bike. “She came round the tree where I was stood, I bashed her no harder than the (girl in the park) and she went down like a log”.

Hearing her bike fall, as Christine stopped a few feet short; seeing a man, an axe and her best-friend lying all bloodied and slumped, Christine panicked. “I only saw one girl. Then the other one screamed”. With his perfect plan smashed and at the risk of her fleeing “I nipped over to shut her up”, with four swift blows to the head which rendered her dazed, immobile and disorientated, but not dead.

Having dragged both girls into the dense dark thicket, for Alfred, although things had gone awry, the maths was very simple; two virgins, one rapist and an insatiable sexual urge to satisfy. So, in a shift to his plan, as they struggled, he strangled, stripped and raped both girls, as they lay side-by-side.

Except… with a pain in her head and blood in her eyes, even as she drifted in-and-out of consciousness in the dark dense thicket, unlike Alfred, there was nothing wrong with Barbara’s eyesight. She was not a stranger (Barbara) “Alf? Alf Whiteway?”. She knew his name, he knew his face, she knew where he lived. “And then I tumbled, she knew me. If it hadn’t been for that, it wouldn’t have happened”.

In a blind angry panic, he snatched the sheath-knife from his saddlebag and in a swift frenzied attack stabbed both girls to death; with Christine lying face-up and his old neighbour Barbara face-down, so he didn’t have to look into the petrified eyes of the little girl he last saw when she was six.

Being dead, he dragged both girls down the grassy slope – their blood stained the coping stones and the oak timbers of the lock-wall – and as he cast both bodies out into the dark black river, the tidal waters carried them upstream and - he hoped - out to sea. He took the weapons, dumped the bikes, mistakenly left behind his green gaberdine rain-coat and believed he had got away with murder. (End)

Only he hadn’t counted on Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan.

Across the five-day trial at The Old Bailey, the defence council for Alfred Whiteway picked holes in the evidence, stated that the confession was a complete fabrication and they questioned the ethics of this highly experienced but devious detective who “always got the job done”.

With the eye-witness testimony of his 14-year-old Kathleen Ringham deemed irrelevant by the judge and the axe inadmissible, basing their conclusion on circumstantial evidence and a dubious confession, the jury took less than 45 minutes to find Alfred Whiteway guilty and his appeal was dismissed.

On 12th November 1953, six weeks before his execution, Alfred sent the detective a handwritten letter from prison. It read “Mr Hannan, you were wrong. Why you made up that false confession I can’t say, but you knew your word would be more accepted than mine. I played into your hands too easily. You were so positive that it was me that you risked a lot to have me hanged. Well, you were successful”.

A second letter Alfred sent to his own mother, it read “I’ll tell you this ma, I’ve done some rotten things in my life but this time they are wrong. I never did it, but I still reckon I deserve to die for that Oxshott affair. So, if anybody brings that up against me, you tell them they’re wrong. Your loving son. Alfred”.

Whether the detective had lied, we shall never know. But the sentence brought closure to the grieving families, the girls were buried, a new era was ushered-in with a new Queen, and - just as Herbert Hannan had promised - peace returned to Teddington as the Thames Towpath Murderer was dead.

Or was he?

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed; two best-friends who lived as they died, side-by-side.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

That was the final part of the Thames Towpath Murders. Next week? Something different. And you love a bit of pointless waffle, Extra Mile is up next.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Shane Kinnair, Kathryn Williams, Cecelia Chang, Sharon Symonds, Michelle Anne Rogers and Lawrence McG, I thank you all muchly for your support. A thank you to Dawn Smith for your very kind donation via my website, and – I’m feeling very spoiled – John Lee, Annemieke (Anna-mick) and Mike Hughes, who weren’t put-off by that annoying advert that Acast forced into each episode, which I have since deleted, and donated via the Supporter link in the show-notes, I thank you too. And as always, a huge thank you to everyone who listens to the show… and doesn’t hate it. This show is for you. Everyone else? Meh.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

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

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

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

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT:
On the morning of Monday 1st June 1953, at 09:05am, the body of Barbara Songhurst was pulled out of the River Thames at Radnor Gardens and brought ashore at St Helena Pier, as many dead bodies are. But even before an autopsy was conducted, Scotland Yard were notified, as this was no accident, this was unmistakably a murder.

• Date: Monday 1st June 1953
• Location: St Helena Pier, by Richmond Bridge
• Victims: 2 (Barbara Songhurst and Christine Rose Reed)
• Culprits: 1 (Alfred Charles Whiteway)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of St Helena Pier where the bodies of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed were brought ashore is marked with a yellow triangle, at the bottom left of the screen by Ham and Petersham. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's two little videos to go with this episode; to the left is 15 Roy Grove, Christine's home where her parents last saw her and Barbara alive and to the right is St Helena Pier where the bodies of both girls were pulled ashore. Below are two more videos showing you the locations where each other girls bodies were found. These videos are a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES:
This case was researched using the original declassified polcie investigation files held at the National Archives, as well as many other sources.

• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9206486
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11246317
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11021923
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9206486

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Maestro Tlakaelel by Jesse Gallagher
  
• Collapsing All Around by Amulets
• Spirit of Fire by Jesse Gallagher
• She Wolf In My Heart by Sergey Cheremisinov
• Tundras by Amulets
• Alone With My Thoughts by Esther Ambrami
• Anxious by Sextile
• Horror House by Aaron Kenny
• Daedalus by Kai Engel
  

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about the investigation into the vicious double-murder of two best-friends, Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed, who were stabbed, raped and disposed-of by an unknown attacker on a peaceful Thames towpath. But who was this man, and why did he kill?

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 108: The Thames Towpath Murders – Part Two: The Investigation.

Today I’m standing by St Helena Pier, just off the Thames towpath in Richmond; one mile north of the camp site at Petersham Meadows where Barbara and Christine enjoyed a last laugh, two miles north of their final sighting just shy of Old Ham Lock, two miles north-east of the shallow waters by Radnor Gardens where Barbara’s body was found, and a full three miles north of Teddington Lock.

St Helena Pier is a popular place for tourists and locals alike, as you’re only a short totter from a posh shopping trip in Richmond town centre, a pleasant scoot along the oddly uneven towpath from Kew Gardens or a bobbly wind-swept boat ride to Hampton Court Palace, but this is a place of rest.

Being an old-fashioned sloped boat-dock leading down to the water’s edge, although buses and trucks whizz passed on the nearby Richmond Bridge, St Helena Pier has a real slowness about it, as everything is done at a very a sedate pace. With a smattering of ale-houses and tea-shops set around a Georgian stepped terrace - if you ignore the modern monstrosity of the aluminium pier – it’s a lovely spot to soak up the view, feed the ducks, inhale some semi-fresh air and do a bit of people-watching.

There’s several types you can see; there’s the strollers, the joggers, the sitters and the snoozers; there’s the pseudo-intellectuals who seem fully absorbed in every word of Albert Camu, except it’s just a dust-jacket covering the latest Jackie Collins smut-fest; there’s the hopeless romantics who’ve hired a boat and punt it like a limbless gondolier and think it’s original to sing the Cornetto song; there’s always a mahogany moron so sunburnt their reddening skin makes you wince, only you know (right now) they’re too drunk to feel it; and from a series of wooden boat sheds, cleverly called the Riverside buildings, four-and-eight man sculling crews row knife-like boats through the water while a mini Hitler barks order at them and gives everyone a hint at how this sad singleton spends his spare time (“stroke, stroke, stroke”).

It’s not all pleasantness though, as with over two hundred bridges along the Thames, sadly each year, at least fifty bodies are recovered from the river. So many, that the Police set-up a marine force to fish the bodies out, several mortuaries were built under various bridges (including Tower Bridge) and many dead have been pulled out – right here - at St Helena Pier. One of whom was a sixteen-year-old girl.

As it was here, on Monday 1st June 1953, that Barbara Songhurst’s body was pulled shore, but even before the autopsy had begun, it was clear that she hadn’t drowned, she was murdered. (Interstitial)

Just one day before the Queen’s Coronation - as the streets were swept, railings were painted and the homeless were bussed-out so they didn’t sully the celebration - for many, this was the start of a public holiday, but for Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan, a murder investigation was about to begin.

At 09:05am, from a few inches of shallow water by the riverbank at Radnor Gardens, Sergeant George Cooper struggled to pull the tiny child-like body of this seven-stone and five-foot girl into his boat, as her blue jeans, white tartan blouse and white woollen coat were sodden with the silty river’s sludge.

Who she was, how she had died and where she had entered the water was unknown, as although most of the evidence had washed away, with the river becoming tidal when the lock’s sluices are up, her body could have travelled many miles upstream or down, depending on the time of day or night.

At a steady speed, Sergeant Cooper drove the boat north, passed Petersham Meadows, Duke’s Hole and fifteen minutes later he arrived at St Helena Pier, where an excitable crowd had already gathered. Attracted by the sight of a constable carrying a lump draped in a thick grey blanket, the chatter ceased and a silence descended, as although the gorpers spied a corpse, by its tiny size, it was clearly a child.

Having commandeered a boat-shed at the Riverside Buildings, whilst they waited for an ambulance to arrive, in accordance with the law Dr Albert Bowtell confirmed her life as extinct. And with her injuries not consistent with a drowning, an accident or a fall, suspecting foul-play, Scotland Yard was notified.

44-year-old Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan was a short but smart man, widely regarded as a highly experienced senior detective with many cases under his belt. Being nicknamed ‘The Count’ owing to his high-class aspirations and slightly affected upper-class accent (which hid the fact he was actually from working-class stock, being born in Paddington to an Irish mother and a Midlands father), that aside, being thorough and determined, he was a man who would leave no stone unturned to see justice done.

At 12:10pm, the autopsy began at Richmond Mortuary, conducted by the pathologist Dr Arthur Mant.

With the young girl’s identity determined and her cause of death confirmed, although he was not medically-trained, Herbert knew that every one of her wounds helped paint a picture of her attacker.

With two impact craters to her head and cheekbone but no defensive wounds, this suggested the initial attack was sudden and premeditated. With the angle of the wounds being head-height, the killer was likely to be a foot taller than Barbara. Being well-built, he inflicted enough force to render her semi-conscious, but his motive wasn’t murder as he had struck her with the blunt curved butt of an axe and not its sharp deadly head, which risked her waking, fleeing or screaming. Both strikes were controlled, as was her violent rape and the disposal of her body, suggesting thar he had attacked before, and yet the three deep and frenzied stab wounds to her back - rather than her front - told a completely different story. It was as if – for whatever reason - something had compelled him to kill.

Detective Superintendent Hannan had painted a rough picture, as the evidence suggested this man was a young well-built male of average height, possibly local, handy with a knife and an axe, who was likely to have prior convictions for a similar offence… only he matched no-known rapist or murderer.

And yet, Herbert saw a strange similarity between Barbara’s murder and an attack, one week prior.

On Sunday 24th May, eight miles south of Teddington, as 14-year-old Kathleen Ringham walked along an isolated path on Oxshott Heath, a vicious sadistic attack had left her dazed, raped and traumatised. Blinded by the pain in her head and the blood in her eyes, she caught a brief glimpse of her assailant; a young white male with dark hair and a cleft chin, who was grubby “like he’d come off a building site” and he had struck her across the head with the blunt curved butt of an axe. The investigation stalled owing to a lack of evidence and witnesses, but the Police had enough details to compile a photofit.

At around the same time that the body of Barbara Songhurst was brought ashore at St Helena Pier, her murder location was discovered, almost three miles south, on the corner of Teddington Lock.

Amid the cloudy moonless sky of the previous night, the raging river had seemed as black as the dense thicket of shadowy trees which shrouded the uneven towpath, but being in the bright light of the crisp summer sun, where red looked red and liquid was vivid, this was the unmistakable sight of a massacre.

On the Ham side of the Thames, just down from the lockkeeper’s cottage, the two pedestrian bridges and the river’s triple locks, on an s-shaped kink to the path lay a green gaberdine rain-coat, several blood spots and some scuff marks in the soil. To the untrained eye it looked like the aftermath of a fight, but to Herbert Hannan, as his experienced eyes followed an obvious and unsettling trail from the towpath to the thicket to the river, it backed-up every detail that Barbara’s autopsy had suggested.

From behind a lone tree, whilst the anxiously waiting assailant had hacked at its bark with an axe, with a swift strike as she cycled-by, he had knocked Barbara clean off her bike. As she fell to the path and perhaps screamed, to silence her, he struck her a second time to render her semi-conscious but alive.

Into the dense thicket he dragged her, among the wooded undergrowth he scattered her clothes, on a patch of flattened grass he savagely raped her, and although he seemed to relish staring into the terrified eyes of this little girl – for whatever reason - having raped her while she was face-up, he then turned her face-down to brutally stab her, as a thick bloody pool slowly spread where she lay dying.

With his evil deed done and his tiny victim dead, having dragged Barbara across the towpath, down the grassy slope - her blood staining the coping stones and the oak timbers of the lock-wall - as cast her out into the dark black river, the tidal waters carried her upstream and - he hoped - out to sea.

He took the weapons, dumped her bike and mistakenly left behind his green gaberdine rain-coat.
Everything about this crime-scene made sense to Detective Hannan… only this wasn’t just the sight of a young girl’s attack, as every detail had been duplicated. This was unmistakably a double murder.

Down to the water, a second set of heels had been dragged. Among the undergrowth were two sets of girl’s low-heeled shoes; one black, one white and both bloodstained, as well as ripped pair of dark blue slacks. And in the dense thicket, lay two flattened patches of grass and two thick pools of blood, where two best-friends had died, side-by-side, as the last sound they heard were each other’s tears.

The scene gave up very few definitive clues to the killer’s identity; there were no bikes, no weapons, no sightings, no witnesses, no shoe-marks and no fingerprints. A lot of vital evidence was missing…

…but more importantly, so was Christine Reed…

…and the likelihood was, she was already dead.

The last days and hours of Barbara and Christine’s lives were investigated thoroughly; the places, the timings and their patterns, all meal-times, every social group and their flick-flacking back and forth between each other’s homes. Gertrude, Daniel and the Songhurst siblings gave solid and consistent statements, as did Herbert, Lucy and the rest of the Reed family. Everyone was questioned from the Blue Angel café, York House, the chemist shop, the factory and the church, but it all drew a blank.

Five people were confirmed as the last to see both girls alive.

Their three pals; John Wells, Albert Sparkes and Peter Warren all gave statements confirming the place and times that the girls had arrived and left the camp-site at Petersham Meadows; they explained what they said, what they did and who with; John admitted to a little light kissing with Barbara, Peter confirmed he had loaned her his bike light, the hand-axe that Albert had used to chop-up the firewood was deemed too small to be the murder weapon, and having gone to sleep fifteen minutes after girls had cycled away, they awoke, packed-up and left the next morning - as verified by the other campers.

As for Basil Nixon and Sheila Daines, who heard the two girls on clattering bikes and chattering away just north of Old Ham Lock? At roughly midnight, needing to head home, Basil and Sheila walked down that same dark overgrown towpath; with the thunder of the black raging river to their right, a dense thicket of shadowy trees to their left, the cloudy moonless sky obscured by a heavy canopy of low-hanging branches and (even with a good torch) their visibility was only a few feet ahead. But as they walked along the towpath passed Teddington Lock, amidst the darkness… they saw and heard nothing.

And that was it.

With no eye-witnesses, no concrete evidence and Christine Reed still missing and presumed dead, the Police publicly released a photofit of the young scruffy man with the cleft-chin wanted for the rape of a minor in Oxshott Heath and possibly Barbara’s murder. But as no-one came forward, the case stalled.

The next day, as the 27-year-old ex-princess was crowned as Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, the grey streets of London erupted in a kaleidoscope of colour and sound as a new era dawned…

…but for one family, this wasn’t a time of joy, but a time of dreaded anticipation, as with their daughter missing and her best-friend dead, the Police search continued unabated for either the girl, or her body.

Nothing was left unchecked, as at the Police’s request, the Port of London Authority drained a three-mile long, four-hundred-foot-wide and forty-foot-deep stretch of the Thames from Teddington Lock to Richmond Bridge for almost a week. To find one little girl, the mighty river was turned into a trickle.

Police boats scoured in packs, divers dredged the thick silty waters and long-lines of constables waded waist-deep along the shoreline for any hint or clue. On Tuesday 2nd, at about 10:30am, a few feet from the grassy-slope at Teddington Lock, Christine’s cream and blue BSA sports model bicycle was found.

Four days later, on Saturday 6th June at 1:35pm, as a Police boat patrolled a popular fishing spot known as Duke’s Hole, among a thick blanket of green algae and a flash of pale white skin, the semi-clad body of a young girl was found face-down in the shallow water, just a few feet from Petersham Meadows.

As before, the body was brought to St Helena Pier. Only this time, as two solemn constables carried the little lump ashore, respectfully hidden under a thick grey blanket, there was no excitable chatter from the people, only the silence of heads hanging low, as everyone’s worst fear had been realised.

And at 2:40pm, in Richmond Mortuary, Herbert Reed identified the body of his daughter – Christine.

With her body bloated and her face decomposed after six days in the cold silty water, just like Barbara, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Arthur Mant, with Detective Superintendent Hannan present.

Time, weather and water had been cruel to her body. In short pale patches, her decaying flesh had been stripped by fish, pecked-at by birds and sharp rocks had torn at her soft skin as she tumbled in the raging river, but although deformed, it was clear which wounds were natural and which were not.

Like Barbara, Christine had been struck, raped, stabbed, dragged and dumped in a premeditated and sudden attack, and although the same wounds had been inflicted by the same man with the same weapons, each of her injuries were more frenzied and brutal, as if he resented Christine being there.

Rather than two, four deep craters impacted the back of her head as the blunt curved butt of an axe had repeatedly caved in her skull, crushing the bone and haemorrhaging her brain. Rather than three, six fast and savage stab wounds had ripped six-and-a-half inches deep into her left breast and chest, piercing her lung, liver and heart, and yet - unlike Barbara - when she was stabbed, she was face-up.

Oddly, unlike Barbara, he stripped her lower half, scattering her black flat-heeled shoes and dark blue slacks into the bushy undergrowth, and yet her white cotton knickers were never found. And with lacerations to her hymen and cuts to her perineum, her virginity had been taken and her rape had been brutal, but during the very brief time he was at the crime scene - in both girls - he had ejaculated.

The autopsy was conclusive, whoever had done this was young, strong, patient and dangerous.
With no known suspects matching this sadistic and horrific attack, Detective Superintendent Hannan had no idea who this man was but he knew one thing for certain… having brazenly committed a double rape and murder, at the same time, in the same place, he had struck before and he would strike again.

Two weeks later, he did.

On the mid-morning of Wednesday 17th June, 15 miles west of Teddington, 49-year-old Patricia Birch left her home in Engelfield Green to walk her dog in Windsor Great Park. The day was clear, sunny and dry, and being a 5000-acre royal park full of rutting deer, wide lakes, dense woods and meandering paths, it’s a popular spot for picnics and walkers, but is large enough to still feel peaceful and private.

As she crossed Wick Lane to enter a gate by Saville Gardens, she spotted a young man on a blue bike staring aimlessly as he watched the smattering of cars which trundled along on this quiet country lane.

He was young, dark-haired and spotty-faced with a noticeable cleft to his chin. He rode a blue bike with white mud-guards and a black saddle-bag. And looking scruffy, as if he had come off a building site, he wore a crumpled blue-shirt, green gaberdine trousers, brown leather gloves and brown shoes with a crepe-sole. He looked a little bit odd, but thinking nothing more of it, she entered the heath.

Playing fetch with her little dog, as Patricia sauntered along an isolated path toward the flat bleak beauty of Black Pond, she heard a clatter as behind her a bike slowly approached. Turning to see that same young man, she called her excitable little dog to her side, so it didn’t run in front of his wheels. But as she stooped to clip on its lead… suddenly her vision went very dark, very fast.

Briefly seeing nothing but black and unable to tell up-from-down as her world spun around, as Patricia slumped hard onto the grassy ground as her weakened legs buckled under her, a trickle of blood ran down her face and pooled into her eyes, as she felt herself being dragged into a dense dark thicket.

Dazed and partially blinded, although petrified and drifting in-and-out of consciousness, as his brown leather gloves gripped tightly around her gasping throat - as much to silence her as to suffocate her - during the attack, Patricia tried to memorise as many details as possible; his height, his age, his weight, his size, his spots, his birth marks, his bike, his saddle-bag and the terrifying sight of his axe. Big enough to chop logs, this yellow-handled, long wooden necked and black bladed axe with a curved blunt butt could inflict death in a single swift blow, being almost as long as an arm and as thick as a head.

Fighting for her life and barely able move her weakened limbs as he tore the clothes off her body and cast them aside into the dense undergrowth – with no-one in sight, her screams muffled and her yappy little dog too small to be of any protection – amidst the dark thicket, he violently raped her.

And when he was done, having stolen the pitiful sum of 17 shillings from her purse, he buttoned-up his trousers and packed-up his saddle-bag, as if this was the most normal thing to do in the world. He didn’t care that she had seen his face, heard his voice or been close enough to smell his breath.

To him, they were nothing but strangers. Seeing an elderly man approach on the path, alerted by her lone dog barking at bushes, the young man rode off on his bike and – into the distance – he vanished.

Patricia Birch was taken straight to Kingston Hospital; her skull hadn’t fractured, the wound only need three stitches, she gave a full statement to the Police, and she went on to make a good recovery.
Sadly, the young man had disappeared…

…but from people’s minds, his photofit had not. 

At 5:30pm, that same day, two builders - Harry Bradford & Bernard Hannam – were reading the paper, discussing the murders and looking at the photofit of the ‘possible suspect’ for the attacks on Barbara Songhurst, Christine Reed and an unnamed 14-year-old girl on nearby Oxshott Heath, when one of the men said “you know what, that looks a lot like Alf”. Having seen him earlier that day, sitting on a tree stump on Oxshott Heath with his bike and his saddle-bag by his side - knowing this local builder fitted the description and had a passion for knives - they did the right thing and called the Police.

At 5:45pm, Constables Oliver & Howard left Kingston Police Station, picked up the builders and over the next 45 minutes they patrolled Oxshott Heath, until they found ‘Alf’. Casually strolling along Sandy Lane, although he had been positively identified, baring only a passing resemblance to the photofit and having no bike, no bag and – more importantly – no axe, the officers stopped and questioned him.

(PC) “What’s your name son?”, (Alfred) “Alfred Whiteway”, (PC) “Address?”, (Alfred) “24 Sydney Road in Teddington”, (PC) “Yours?”, (Alfred) “Nah, I live with my mum”. (PC) “Empty your pockets”, which he did, but it only contained 10 shillings and two bike clips. (PC) “Bike-clips, so where’s your bike?”, (Alfred) “I left it at home”, (PC) “You got a bag?”, (Alfred) “Nah, just what I got”. And seeing a few spots of blood dotted down his crumpled blue shirt, accepting acne as a plausible excuse, the baby-faced youth agreed to come in for questioning and freely volunteered his time to assist the Police.

Driven in the Police’s black Wolseley Saloon, 22-year old Alfred Charles Whiteway, known to his pals as ‘Alf’ was calm, pleasant and showed a genuine interest in cars, he even leaned forward from the back seat to ask the constables questions about the motor and get a better look at the speedometer.

Never once did he act like a killer who had been caught and not for a single second did he seem like a sadistic sexual predator who had attacked one girl, murdered two more and having already raped one woman that day, had cycled a further fifteen miles south-east to Oxshott Heath, to attack again.

At roughly 7pm, they arrived at Kingston Police Station. Brought before Detective Inspector Brammell who looked the spotty youth up-and-down, before he could be questioned any further, seeing only a vague similarity in the boy, the detective dismissed him, and Alfred Whiteway walked free. (End)

Being in an era of typewriters, paper-files and index-cards, with just two telephones per office, no easy way to copy documents and little communication between the Police – by the time of Alfred’s release – the report on the attack of Patricia Birch had yet to be filed. It hadn’t been circulated to the press, other officers, or the detective heading-up the investigation into the murders of Barbara & Christine.

Among the post-euphoric glow of the Queen’s Coronation, as war-time rationing wound down and the people dreamed of a better future for all, a sadistic sex maniac and violent double murderer was still in their midst. Free to go where he wished, to do as he pleased, and to rape whoever he desired.

The press had dubbed him ‘The Thames Towpath Murderer’, but as invisible and invincible as this monster felt, with not a single shred of evidence to tie him to his crimes, the one person he hadn’t counted on was the one man who sought to bring him down, who was nicknamed ‘The Count’.

Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan was one of Scotland Yard’s most highly experienced and decorated officers, who was thorough, determined and precise, and would leave no stone unturned, even going so far as to drain a three-mile stretch of London’s largest river to find a single little girl.

He was a loving husband, a doting father and a proud grandfather who wanted his girls (and every other girl) to be safe to walk the streets, paths or towpaths of the place they all called home.

Described by the Force as ‘The Policeman’s Policeman’, Hannan was smart, cunning, devious and although a highly skilled interrogator and investigator who always got the job done, to get results he would later state “sometimes, you have to go beyond what it right, to see justice done”.

Justice was coming to Teddington, but two big questions still plagued the mind of Detective Herbert Hannan - “who was this maniac” and “why did he attack both girls at the same time?”

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

That was part two of three of the Thames Towpath Murders, with the final part next week. And there’s some aimless waffle after the break with Extra Mile, so turn off now, if you haven’t already.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Richard Saunders, Tony Hobden and Paige Spencer, I thank you all muchly for your support. A thank you to Sue Lloyd for your very kind donation via my website, and Gavin, Minna and Racheal P who donated via the Supporter link in the show-notes, I thank you too. I’m now off to buy a wheelbarrow load of cake. Yum. And as always, a huge thank you to everyone who listens to the show, as without listeners, I’m just a fat bald man talking to himself.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

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

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

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

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN:
On the night of Sunday 31st May 1953, Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed, two innocent and inseparable best-friends were brutally raped and murdered on a peaceful towpath and their bodies
were dumped in the River Thames. But who would want these two young girls dead, and why?

• Date: Sunday 31st May 1953
• Location: Teddington Lock, a towpath off the River Thames
• Victims: 2 (Barbara Songhurst and Christine Rose Reed)
• Culprits: 1 (Alfred Charles Whiteway)
  

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Here's two little videos; on the left is the exact location of the Thames towpath where Alfred Whiteway was hiding and where Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed would be murdered. And on the right is a short extract to show you part of the route both girls would have cycled. This video is a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Left to right: a photo of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed, Babrara's home at 75 Prince's Road in Teddington, Christine's home at 15 Roy Grove in Hampton, and then in the smaller photos (top left) Petersham Meadows, (bottom left) Teddington footbridge on the opposite side of the river, (top right) Teddington Lock looking down towards the Lockkeeper's Cottage and the murder location and (bottom right) the first Teddington footbridge, just passed the murder location.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES:
This case was researched using the original Police investigation files, as well as many other reliable sources, including first hand accounts, autopsy reports and personal experimentation.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4202459
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10887878
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4202445
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C555396

SOUNDS:
Blackbird (klankbeeld) - https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/273810/
English Bird Song - https://freesound.org/people/kernowrules/sounds/233575/
Fringe Sounds - https://freesound.org/people/Udit%20Duseja/sounds/243708/
River Boats - https://freesound.org/people/echobones/sounds/122262/

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Money’s Gone by Cult With No Name
• The Beauty of Love by Aakash Ghandi (consider / echoey, a reprise later)
  
• Consider Maestro Tlakaelel by Jesse Gallagher (for hint of Alfred)
• The Curious Kitten by Aaron Kenny
• Wistful Harp by Andrew Huang

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about the vicious double-murder of Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed; two innocent and inseparable best-friends brutally savaged on a peaceful riverside towpath. But who would want these two young girls dead, and why?

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 107: The Thames Towpath Murders – Part One: The Girls.

Today I’m standing by Teddington Lock on the south side of the River Thames, far beyond anywhere we’ve been to before, but oddly, every location (from Petersham Meadows, Old Ham Lock, St Helena Pier, Duke’s Hole and Teddington Lock Bridge, right across Twickenham, Kingston and Hampton Hill) can be seen from Richmond Hill where Kate Beagley watched her last sunset with the First Date Killer.

At 215 miles long, the Thames is the second longest river in Britain, stretching from Kemble (west of Oxford), through the city of London, to Foulness Point on the east coast and the North Sea beyond. It’s fast, wide, strong and deadly, rising and falling 23 feet a day and flowing faster than most boats.

For many Londoners, a walk along the Thames can make you feel like you’re in the country whilst still being in the city, as with buildings heavily-restricted, many stretches are full of wild fields, woodlands and deer parks. Of course, at weekends, the uneven towpaths are chock-a-block with Lycra-clad twats on pricey bikes swearing at any dog who disrupts their land speed record, sweaty-faced joggers (one step from a heart-attack) who feel obliged to make ‘that’ sound (hurgh) with every breath, and swarms of over-sugared seeds-of-Satan terrorising the wildlife because their parents would rather see a duck stamped to death than hire a babysitter, or ‘do their bloody job’. Thankfully, at other times of the week - being shielded by trees, shrubs and bushes - it’s actually a very nice place for a quiet walk. 

With the Thames being tidal, initially built over 200 years ago, Teddington Lock is a triple-lock between the Middlesex and Surrey sides of this 250 foot wide stretch of the river, allowing the safe passage of boats, as well as pedestrians via two footbridges interconnected over a small island. And where-as the Teddington side has many homes, pubs and shops, the Ham side of the lock is little more than an unlit over-grown towpath shrouded in a dense dark thicket of trees and bushes, where an endless series of dog-walkers, joggers and casual strollers breathe in the fresh sea air. So, it seems unthinkable that such a peaceful little spot could be scene of a brutal double-murder.

But it was.

As it was here, on the night of Sunday 31st May 1953, at the corner of Teddington Lock, that two young girls would be brutally murdered. But the question wasn’t how, or who by, but why? (Interstitial)

As two loving and inseparable best-friends, Barbara and Christine lived as they died, side-by-side.
Barbara Songhurst was born in Teddington on the 29th April 1937, as a middle-child of ten to Gertrude & Daniel; a loving couple, married for 23 years, who had stuck together through good times and bad.

Being a good Anglican family of twelve crammed into a small white council-house on a long tree-lined street in Hampton Hill - although the two eldest boys (Danny and Robert) had moved out, Arthur was on National Service and Doris was hospitalised with spinal tuberculosis – with only three bedrooms for mum, dad, Pamela, Edwin, John and Nina, with 16-year-old Barbara sharing a bed with her eldest sister Rose. this little terraced house at 75 Prince’s Road was a squeeze for a family of eight.

Having moved out of a tiny terrace at 18 Sydney Road just eight years earlier, since birth and for the rest of her life, Barbara would always live in and around Teddington, the place she called home.

Life was busy, noisy and hard, as with their invalid father being confined to a steel jacket having broken his back, with the compensation spent and unable to work for ten years, as Gertrude was the full-time carer for her children and husband, they lived off benefits and what the siblings could earn.

Homelife was difficult but never unkind, chaotic but never cruel, and although a little undisciplined, it was only as dysfunctional as was to be expected from a big family in a small house living (but surviving) in a difficult circumstance. But as with all of their children, Barbara was good, decent and raised well.

Having graduated with a school certificate from the Victoria Girls School, a Church of England school a few doors down on Prince’s Road, aged 15, Barbara got a job as a shop assistant at Harwood & Halls chemist shop in Hampton Hill, earning £1 and 15 shillings-a-week, and – just as all of her work-age siblings did – more than half of what she earned went to feed and clothe the family.
Described by everyone as bubbly, fun and energetic - as a slim petite brunette just shy of five-foot-tall; with a slender figure, a confident stance, a fashionable dress sense and a cheeky smile - Barbara was popular with the boys and she loved their attention, but being blessed with a forceful personality, she had held onto her virginity as (being religious) she was saving herself for ‘Mr Right’.

Barbara wasn’t a silly little giggling girl who stumbled into trouble, as although she had a small child-like body and the excitable brain of a teen savouring her freedom, she also had an adult’s wisdom which belied her tender years. As a local girl, she had some serious street-smarts. She liked watching live music, but didn’t venture any place she didn’t feel safe. She liked thrills, but was never a bother to herself or anyone else. She freely cycled along the river, but rarely strayed far from the towpaths or bridges she trusted to get herself home. She stayed out late, but always kept her parents informed of her whereabouts. And although chatty and confident, she never, ever, talked to strangers.

In fact, being both sensible and inseparable, always by Barbara’s side was her best-friend – Christine. 

Born two years and one month earlier on 18th March 1935, Christine Rose Reed was the middle-child of Herbert & Lucy. Living off Herbert’s modest wage as a shop assistant and with her housewife mother Lucy being deaf, they weren’t well-off, but their homelife was always happy, loving and stable.

Having scraped by at school and described as a little bit educationally challenged, 18-year-old Christine had found work as a factory hand in Hampton, earning a wage of £3 18 shillings a week, and (just like her best pal) half of her wage went to support her family.

Like a slightly taller twin, Christine was a slim petite brunette with olive skin, brown eyes, a small nose and a curly bob of hair, and although she also liked the boy’s attention, she often got less than her bubbly buddy being a little more shy, quiet and prim, but no less chatty once she felt comfortable.

Living a few roads apart, Christine and Barbara’s life revolved around their friendship. Every moment of their free-time was spent by each other’s side; they ate, cried, prayed and (during their many sleep-overs) they even slept together, and although both girls often stayed out late, neither of their parents ever worried as the girls were always honest about where they had been, who with, when they would be home, and that – no matter what – these inseparable sisters would never be parted, even in death.

Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed were two innocent young girls living their ordinary little lives within the safety of the place they had always called home. Nobody wanted them dead. And yet, for no known reason, someone would brutally savage both girls in a truly horrifying way. (Interstitial)

Eight years after the end of the Second World War, with the country smashed and battle-scarred, its charred cities pockmarked with bomb-craters and a weary people struggling under the twin burden of an economic slump and a population boom, 1953 marked a new dawn for Britain. Over the sweet smell of cakes being baked, the excitable squeal of children playing and the drab grey streets flecked with the patriotic red, white and blue of Union Jack bunting, a joyous thrum rippled across the city in anticipation of the impending Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in just one week’s time.

This wasn’t just a party, this was a fresh beginning, and with the typically unpredictable British weather actually playing ball for once – being a bank holiday – with shorts on, tops off and work done, swarms of Londoners flocked to the banks of the River Thames for picnics, walks and to set up camp.

It was a moment of great celebration…

…so, one weekend prior, on Sunday 24th May, following short spate of sexual assaults on lone females walking in isolated spots, a vicious sadistic attack occurred eight miles south of Teddington on Oxshott Heath, leaving a 14-year-old girl raped, bloodied and traumatised. But with very little evidence, the investigation came to nothing, and for now, such horrors would be put to the back of everyone’s mind.

The seven days before their deaths were unremittingly ordinary for the girls; they saw nothing strange, they heard nothing weird and they met no-one odd; they had no fears, no worries and they felt need to ever be frightened; their families was fine, their friendship was solid and their life was simple.

On Sunday 24th May, as per usual, they went to church, had a roast, cycled and came home.

Monday 25th was a Bank Holiday, so with the shops shut, the day was much the same.

Tuesday to Friday was a regular working week so Barbara assisted at Harwood & Halls chemist shop, Christine as an assembly-line worker at a nearby factory, and each evening, as if by clockwork, the two best-friends met-up to sit, chat and giggle.

On Friday 29th, at the Blue Angel café in Hampton Hill - a local hang-out full of fizzy pop, rock-and-roll and pinball machines - John Wells who was Christine’s neighbour at 8 Roy Grove and her good friend for the last five years invited both girls to a camping party that Sunday at Petersham Meadows. It would a bit of fun with a few chums in a safe local place that they all knew, so both parents approved.

And on Saturday 30th, Barbara, Christine and their pal Joy Woolveridge got dressed in their finest and went dancing at York House, a rather grand stately home in Twickenham. With the band packed-up by midnight, they cycled two miles home, partially down the unlit and overgrown towpath – which may sound dangerous but it was a damn-sight safer than sharing a potholed road with the nightly rumble of trucks and buses that thundered by – and at 12:45am, a little later than promised, both girls returned to 15 Roy Grove, as witnessed by Christine’s father and (as per usual) Barbara stayed over.

The only thing that made the next day strange was that, by nightfall, both girls would be dead.

Sunday 31st May 1953 would be a glorious day; the sun was out, the skies were blue, the breeze was kept the heat cool and it would be a perfect day for a friendly little picnic at a mate’s camping party.

Waking-up at a little after 9am in Christine’s tiny bedroom, the two girls made their plans for the day, and as Christine dressed, Barbara cycled the eight-minutes home to 75 Prince’s Road, and at roughly the same time, they regaled their parents with last night’s fun and news of today’s picnic at Petersham Meadows with John Wells and a few pals. With tomorrow being a work day, they promised to be back in their own beds by 11pm, which both parents knew meant either midnight or just a touch later.

At 10:30am - being fashionably and yet comfortably dressed in blue jeans, a white coat, a yellow tartan blouse, flat-heeled shoes with white socks and accessorised with a double row of imitation pearls and two brooches (one a patriotic pin for the Festival of Britain and a horseshoe for good luck) - being in a bright and perky mood, Barbara Songhurst left her home on her maroon-coloured Phillips sports cycle.

Likewise – being semi-sensibly dressed in dark blue slacks, a yellow woollen cardigan, a white blouse, white ankle socks and a pair of low-heeled black shoes – as Christine cycled away on her cream and blue BSA sports model bicycle, her mood was typically upbeat, happy and carefree.

At 11am, they met somewhere in Teddington, but no-one knows where, and they headed to John’s picnic at Petersham Meadows - which they would return to three times that day - although no-one else can recall seeing them. But then again, why would they? Barbara and Christine were two young girls in a sea of a few thousand people who flocked to the bustling riverbank on a gloriously sunny day.

At 1:30pm, both girls briefly returned to Barbara’s home, although no-one can be unsure why, but with the shops shut, it may have been to find a spare battery or a bulb for her broken bicycle light. At 1:45pm, they left again, they were still happy and laughing, and by 2pm, they returned to 15 Roy Grove for lunch with Christine’s parents. At 4pm they left and at 5pm they returned, but this back-and-forth between each other’s homes was very typical of the two girls, who often flick-flacked across the town travelling as-and-where the mood took them, but – not for a single second – were they ever apart.

At 7:30pm, as Christine cycled away from her home, down a side alley between 14 and 15 Roy Grove, with Barbara beside her, that was the last time that Herbert Reed would ever see his daughter alive.

Roy Grove to Petersham Meadows was a familiar four-mile route that the two girls had already cycled twice that day and hundreds of times – both day and night - over the years they had been best-friends.

Scooting down Uxbridge Road, they snuck across Bushy Park for a peek at the deer, headed through the hubbub of the High Street, down Ferry Road and at the river they crossed the two footbridges over Teddington Lock, turned left passed the lock keeper’s cottage, and followed the Thames north, up an over-grown and uneven towpath, passed Old Ham Lock, Eel Pie Island and – twenty minutes later, just passed Duke’s Hole - they would reach a little place known as Log Farm in Petersham Meadows.

Of course, at 8pm, as they dumped their bikes in the long grass and sauntered up towards the joyous sounds of a tinny transistor radio, the delicious smell of fire-roasted sausages and sidled up to the camp-site to say “hi” to the boys, neither girl would know the significance that Duke’s Hole (or even St Helena Pier just half a mile north) would play in the final days and hours of their lives and deaths, as Barbara and Christine were here to have fun.

Petersham Meadows was a large open field, just off the Thames towpath, with a small farm for felling trees on the south side, water-filled gravel-pits at the front and surrounded by a thick line of tree.

That day, although typically, the bright sunshine had been masked behind a thick grey dollop of cloud, the field was still relatively full of campers, and although the numbers had dwindled a little since dusk had begun to fall, the nearest other camping party was only about one hundred and fifty feet away.

As before, the party was small, just five chums in total; John Wells had erected a canvas tent for the three boys to sleep in, Albert Sparkes was chopping fire-wood with a small slightly blunt axe and Peter Warren was supposed to be the chef, but most of the sausages ended-up raw or burnt to a crisp.

And that was it.

Just like in the days before their deaths, they saw nothing strange, they heard nothing weird and they met no-one odd. This was just a simple little picnic with some old and new friends around a camp-fire by a river. Being teenagers and young men, there was a little drinking, some giggling, some kissing, a few larks, japes and high-jinx, but it was all pretty innocent stuff for such virtuous girls.

Only this moment of fun and hilarity would be the last that the two girls would ever share

With little of what was left of the sun having set almost two hours earlier, with only a hint of a moon, a dense cloud-cover having descended, and being nowhere near a single flickering street-light, head lamp or brightly-coloured bulb in celebration of this coming Tuesday’s Coronation, the five pals were only illuminated by the alluring glow of the crackling campfire. Darkness was upon them, and as the silences between the laughs grew longer, the party wound down and the girls knew it was time to go.

As none of the group wore a watch, having heard a distant clocktower strike its eleventh chime, the girls knew that they would be slightly (but not unreasonably) late if they set-off now, which they did.

With the woods, river and towpath being pitch-black at this time of night, as the batteries to Barbara and Christine’s bicycle lights had run flat and having been unable to find any spares earlier that day, Peter kindly loaned his bike light to Barbara. It wasn’t a great little lamp. In fact, it’s dull yellow glow barely shone further than a few feet ahead of her thin front wheel, but it was better than nothing.

At roughly 11:15pm, having waved the girls goodbye, John, Albert and Peter finished off the sausages, turned off the radio and amidst the soft rustle of their sleeping-bags, all three went to sleep. The night was deathly quiet, except for a light wind, the leaves in the trees and the soothing rush of the river.

The last sighting of Barbara and Christine was roughly fifteen minutes later, just shy of Old Ham Lock. 

As two pals - Basil Nixon and Sheila Daines - lay on the grass, from the north they heard the rickety clatter of two bikes riding in tandem, with two young girls loudly chatting back-and-forth, as up-front a single dull yellowy bike-light bobbed along the uneven towpath towards Teddington Lock, and as they were slowly swallowed-up by the dark dense woodland – with that - the two girls had vanished. 

Just shy of midnight, needing to head home, Basil & Sheila walked down that same dark overgrown towpath; with the thunder of the black raging river to their right, a dense thicket of shadowy trees to their left, the cloudy sky obscured by a heavy canopy of low-hanging branches and (even with a decent torch) their visibility was just a few feet ahead. So, as the couple dawdled south, along the towpath, passed Teddington Lock, the Lockkeeper’s Cottage and crossed over the double footbridges heading towards the distant lights of Teddington town, amidst the darkness… they saw and heard nothing.

That night, 16-year-old Barbara Songhurst and 18-year-old Christine Reed didn’t return home.

At 8:15am, on Monday 1st June, the next morning, as George Coster, a foreman for the Port of London Authority was working at Radnor Gardens (one mile north of Teddington Lock), just twenty feet from the riverbank, he spotted something floating in the shallow water. It was “probably a log” he thought, or “a bit of rubbish, or debris”, but as he threw a rope to draw it nearer – seeing a white coat, dark hair, a yellow tartan blouse and pale white skin – it was unmistakably the body of a young girl.

Alerting the Police, at 9:05am, Sergeant George Cooper placed the cold damp body in a boat, and under a blanket took it to St Helena Pier - just one mile north of Petersham Meadows where barely twelve hours earlier this little girl had enjoyed a last laugh with her best-friend – and in a discrete wooden boat-shed at the Riverside Buildings, (as the law decrees) Dr Bowtell determined her life as extinct.

Transferred to Richmond Mortuary and having already been declared as missing by her parents, later that morning, Gertrude Songhurst confirmed that the clothes, the brooch pin and the stone-cold body which lay before her, as that of her daughter – Barbara. She was dead, and had been in the water for nearly nine hours. But she didn’t drown. And seeing only her baby’s beautiful face, under a black rubber sheet, the worst of the young girl’s injuries were deliberately hidden from view.

At 12:10pm, in the presence of Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannan and conducted by Dr Arthur Mant, the autopsy of 16-year-old Barbara Songhurst took place.

Her face and head had two obvious wounds; under a one-inch gash to top of her skull, a crushing blow had cratered the bone and haemorrhaged her brain, and under a curved two-inch wound between her left eye and ear, a second swift strike had split her left cheekbone, as if – without warning - she had been forcibly struck by something heavy and hard but dull, perhaps the blunt end of an axe.

On her torso, her tartan blouse and white coat (now sodden with the silty filth of the river) was only fastened by the top button, but through its once-white cloth, three deep stab-wounds could be clearly seen across her back; each one having punctured her left lung, her right lung and right into her heart, with several blades of severed grass poking out of the lowest of the wounds.

With her socks still on but her shoes missing, the raging water had rearranged parts of her clothing, but with her top exposing her midriff, her blue jeans unbuttoned and the crotch of her thin cotton knickers ripped open, there was no denying that this innocent little girl had been raped, as she lay dying. And with a series of rough cuts to her hyman, bruises up her inner thighs and her vagina full of semen - with her very last breath - she had tried to put up a fight, as her attacker took her virginity.

And once he was done - with her dead and raped - a series of long lacerations down her legs, buttocks, back and heels suggested she had been dragged along the towpath, down the side of the riverbank, into the tidal waters below, and – like an unwanted piece of rubbish – she was dumped in the river.

Her shoes were gone, her other brooch had vanished, her bike was missing and so was Christine. (End)

The murder of Barbara Songhurst was a perplexing mystery; no-one saw her attack, no-one heard her rape, no-one witnessed her murder or disposal, and no-one wanted her (or her best-friend) dead. They were two innocent young girls living their ordinary little lives in the place they felt safe, who would be brutally attacked in an isolated spot, on a public towpath, by a person or persons unknown.

This should have been a fresh start for everyone, a time of celebration, but a violent killer was in their midst, and just one day from the Queen’s Coronation, the newspapers were all about a dead little girl.

But the rape and murder of Barbara Songhurst didn’t make any sense.

If it was pre-meditated, the murder location would have been somewhere dark, dense and isolated, perhaps a spot on the towpath up near the Lock. But if her rape was his motive, why did he attack two girls, on bicycles, at the same time, rather than just one? What if the other screamed, or got away?

If the murder was personal, and a brazen double-murder of two little girls was his aim, why did the attacker strike Barbara twice across the head and face with a blunt end of an axe to render her semi-conscious, only to violently stab her to death with a knife? Why keep her alive, only to make her dead?

Nothing made sense, and with no footmarks, no fingerprints, no witnesses, no sounds heard, no sights seen and no weapons found, Barbara’s murder would remain a mystery.

And yet, as a second little girl would wash up on the river bank and the murder location was uncovered, it became very clear, that - as two loving and inseparable best-friends - Barbara and Christine had lived as they died, side-by-side.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

That was part one of three of the Thames Towpath Murders, with the next part next week. But if you fancy learning some more details about the case and enjoy half an hour of utter waffle, stay tuned for Extra Mile.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Bridget O'Keeffe, Jacqueline Rutland, Samantha Woodhouse and Grace Ashby-Walker, I thank you all for your support, it’s much appreciated. A thank you to Kay Fillmore for your very kind donation, and Stevo and Patsy who donated via the Supporter link in the show-notes, I thank you too. And with a huge thank you to all supporters of the show, in whatever way you choose, whether by Patreon, donations, reviews, or simply by listening to it and saying “yeah, I like that, it was okay”. 

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.
 

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***
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 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, therefore mistakes will be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile 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. It is not a full representation of the case, the people or the investigation in its entirety, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity and drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, therefore it will contain a certain level of bias to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.