Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO:
This is Part Two of Two of 'Fat Fred'. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9:40am, a gang of armed robbers stole £166,000 (£3.2 million today) from Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, and in their haste to escape, three officers were shot, many were injured, and Detective Superintendent Gerry Richardson was shot. The gang’s leader, Frederick Sewell, a gangster known as ‘Fat Fred’ was branded ‘Britain’s most hates man’ and hunted. But what had this killing spree got to do with the murder of Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What links ‘Fat Fred’ a playboy and an armed robber who was dubbed ‘Britain’s most hated man’, and the killing of a fancy dress-shop owner with a dark secret locked in his attic? Find out on Murder Mile. (Tyres squeal, a man running). Superintendent Gerald Richardson ran down Sherbourne Road shouting for the masked robber to stop, as three-miles of quiet residential back-streets in Blackpool rang with the sounds of tyres squealing, shots and sirens. With £166,000 worth of jewels stolen, behind him two getaway cars lay crashed, several police cars smashed, a butcher’s van hijacked and officers injured; with PC Hampson shot in the chest, PC Walker blasted in the leg, and this gang of five reduced to two. Running down Carshalton Street, as a solidly-built sportsman, Gerry was easily catching-up the red-faced and wheezing bulk of ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell, as the masked robber in the warm woollen raincoat sweated profusely, his clammy hands struggling to hold onto the bag of jewels and the loaded shotgun. Gerry had a pistol in his jacket, but with families gorping from each window and the street awash with potential hostages, he couldn’t risk another bloody shoot-out, as he chased the felon into a dark alley. Several eyewitnesses recalled “when the masked man got to the bottom of the alley, he stopped and turned”, “the policeman said to him ‘don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over’”, “they started to struggle. I heard a shot”, “the policeman staggered, and another shot rang out”, as Gerry, a brave and dedicated officer and a married man was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And as he slumped onto his hands and knees in the empty alley, blood pouring from his guts, Sewell didn’t stop to help, he fled. Caring only for himself and his money, Sewell ran back into the street, shoved the shotgun in through the window of a grey van, ordered the driver to “get out and leave the keys”, and then vanished. It was later found abandoned behind the Derby swimming baths, but Sewell was nowhere to be seen. Prior to this, he was a nobody, a nothing, his name wasn’t known except by the leeches who wanted his lifestyle and the ladies who loved him; he was a petty thief, a pathetic playboy, and a dodgy car dealer who posed as a country squire and laid low to live the high-life, but now, he was infamous. With the sounds of the shotgun still ringing in their ears, Irene Jermain, Sewell’s 38-year-old fiancé was thumbing through a bridal magazine being just one week before their wedding, when at their safe house on Cocker Street, “I heard tyres screech, he ran upstairs and fell through the door, exhausted, saying ‘’it was terrible, cars have been smashed and a policeman’s been shot”, as the plan to ‘get in, grab and get out’ had gone to pot, Bond, Spry & Flannigan were arrested, and he was being hunted. Moments later, Haynes arrived, panicked, himself having barely escaped, so with both men crouched down in the boot of a car, at a sedate and unsuspicious pace, Irene drove them out of Blackpool. First to Haynes’ lodging for a change of clothes, then 60 miles north to Westmorland near Greyrigg Moor, a remote and isolated track lost amidst the fog-wreathed wilds of peat bogs and looming mountains. Sewell claimed he was burying rubbish which could identify them, but like the Beeston raid, with the loot too hot to handle, he would bury it beside the Kendal to Tebay road until the heat had died down. That was the amended plan … …but six hours later, all that would change at a café in Windemere, when on the radio they heard “in a daylight robbery at Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, Detective Superintendent Gerald Richardson was shot and killed by armed robbers… Police are searching for two men who got away in stolen cars”. Sewell had begun the day as a nobody, and now, he was ‘Villain No1’. Speeding back, Haynes was dropped off near his home in London, and Sewell & Irene to their £30,000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. Sewell knew he needed to lay-low, just as he had done after the Beeston raid where he’d remained hidden from a police manhunt for 14 months, but this was different. This wasn’t a lost box of insured corporate money, this was the death of a respected police officer, the attempted murder of three others, and now the full force of every constabulary would be after him. Sewell left after four hours saying he’d contact Irene (his bride-to-be) soon, but he never spoke to her again. Arrested, on 31st of August 1971, the day she was due to marry him in Reigate, she was instead at Blackpool Magistrates Court being charged with aiding this felon’s escape. In March 1972, around the time they should have opened their hotel on the Isle of Sheppey, she was sentenced to 15 months. Being a ladies man, his next stop was to covertly meet his mistress and mother of his child Barbara Palmer in a dark lane, where she gave him clean clothes, agreed to dry-clean his bloodstained suit, then he fled. And like Irene, he never saw her again, and she was charged with impeding his arrest. With every newspaper, whether local or national, splashing his face across the front page, plastering his description in the first paragraph and tracking his every move, “Frederick Joseph Sewell, 38, 5 foot 10, 14 stone, brown hair, blue eyes, armed and dangerous” was burdened by the nickname of ‘Fat Fred’, and the press would use every trick in the book to make the public hate this cowardly cop-killer. Seeking help, two days after the shooting, he was seen at a garage in Tooting, but Police missed him by minutes. Knowing his haunts, Detectives scoured every club and restaurant he frequented, every flat or home he owned, and every garage and car showroom he ran, from his birth place in Brixton, Camberwell where he grew up, Islington where he had business rivals, and even his brother’s pig farm. Had he been caught quickly, the story may have died down and ‘Fat Fred’ the wanted cop-killer might never have become a household name and a bogeyman still being hated three decades after his arrest, but he knew he had to remain hidden, as he was villain no1, and there were few people he could trust. Last official sighting of Sewell was on Thursday the 26th of August 1971, three days after the robbery. He went to Hatfield (a place he didn’t know), he hired a battered old VW beetle (a car that a man of his status wouldn’t drive), he ditched his fancy clothes, he grew a beard and he merged into the crowd. Avoiding his bank, he had Eugene Kerrigan, a loyal employee at his showroom quickly sell four cars to help him flee, and said “once Kerrigan had got the £6000 to me, you would never have seen me again”. The flashy playboy once nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’ was silent and in hiding… …but then he had to be, as the manhunt was in full force for ‘Britain’s most hated man’. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Mounsey of Lancashire’s CID, a tough no-nonsense copper whose sole mission was to apprehend and convict this brutal cop-killer. It’s often said ‘there’s honour among thieves’, and although, Spry claimed to have amnesia, Bond gave a ‘no comment’ interview, and Flannigan said he wasn’t a robber but the gang’s hostage, when Haynes was arrested the next day while trying to watch his 15 year-old daughter take part in a riding event at Stoneleigh, Haynes stated “this is what I get for doing someone a favour. Sewell wanted a driver, he knew I lost money in the club and said it would be easy”, and by then, all of the gang had blabbed. Police used metal detectors on Greyrigg Moor to find Sewell’s cut of the stolen jewels, a trail of clues were scattered across the backstreets of Blackpool, and one mile north on Back Warbreck Road sat their forgotten getaway car – the gold-coloured Ford Capri GT with a false registration plate, and a shotgun, cartridges and a loaded revolver in the boot, as well as Sewell’s fingerprints everywhere. Having gone to ground, Police knew who he was, but not where he was. They needed the public’s help to find him, and there was no better way to catch a felon than by making the public angry at his crimes. Two days into this 45 day man hunt, Police named Sewell as a ‘dangerous fugitive’. Front page of The Mirror newspaper, the headline read ‘Thugs’, complete with a photo of the brave dead detective and the two injured PCs recovering in hospital. Underneath were three bullet points; stating ‘why are the Police angry’, ‘why the public are worried’, and (indulgently, like this tabloid was a self-appointed so-called voice of the people and avenging public crusader) ‘what the Mirror believes should be done’? Across the country, every paper dedicated their main story and many pages inside to the hunt for ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most wanted man’, with The People’s headline stating ‘there’s no escape for Sewell’ and the subline ‘he’ll soon find that he can expect no help from the underworld’, with their dictionary exhausted by calling him ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘nasty’ and ‘evil’, making ‘Fat Fred’ a national name to blame. Now everyone knew his details, but still they couldn’t find him, so the Police sweetened the deal by getting The Mirror, the nation’s most read newspaper to offer something no-one could resist – money. On 7th of September 1971, two weeks after the robbery, The Mirror offered a £10,000 reward (a life changing sum of money and enough to buy a house) “for information leading to the arrest of Sewell”. Inside, across two pages was a ‘cut out’ article that readers could pin it to their wall with the headline ‘how to spot Sewell’. In vivid detail, it described him as “five foot ten, stockily built, 14 stone, thick set about the neck and has a pronounced stomach, a prominent feature is his loose bottom lip”, as well as tiny facts about him like “he always rubs his podgy hands together when laughing… he fiddles with beer mats… smokes a small cigar with his left hand, frequently buries his head in his palms, he’s fond of dog tracks, big cars and movies (westerns and gangster films)… he drinks ‘Bacardi and cola’, he’s a snappy dresser” often seen wearing a roll-neck jersey, “and he has a two inch scar below his left ear”. Setting their HQ at Tintagel House by the River Thames, a flood of letters swamped the Police postbag, and their hotline for the public to call rang off the hook day and night with possible sightings of Sewell. Every tip was vetted and checked for Villain No1. Road blocks were set-up, trains were inspected, ships were searched and airfields scoured by sniffer dogs. Amateur sleuths supposedly spotted him at the Legal & General building in London, it was raided, but it just turned out to be a bod standard fat man. Again, he was ‘seen’ at an airstrip in East Riding, driving a Rolls Royce at Heathrow airport, at a banquet in Staffordshire, and in a blue car in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, but none of them were ‘Fat Fred’. Reading of his alleged ‘sightings’ in the national newspapers, the real ‘Fat Fred’ remained anonymous and out of view, and with the hunt for ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ growing feverish and more rabid… …many of the facts about his possible sightings were obscured by sensationalist fiction. On Sunday the 3rd of October 1971, 42 days into the 45-day manhunt, adding more fuel to the flames, The Mirror stated “Sewell is wanted for questioning about the murder of Superintendent Richardson and Malcolm Heaysman”, the fancy-dress shop owner found dead in Wales, just five days before. As associates, with his name found in Malcolm’s diary, Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of the Scotland Yard end of the investigation stated “because of information received, I believe (Sewell) can assist my inquiries… in regard to himself and the identity of an associate known to them both… I also believe he can help identify a vehicle”, a gold or bronze coloured Ford, “stolen earlier from London, which was seen in Llangadog on the day of the murder” being the nearest village to Malcolm’s cottage. The article states ‘Sewell is not wanted for the killing of Malcolm Heaysman’, but with the front-page headline reading ‘Sewell named in new killer hunt’, this key piece of information was lost in the fifth paragraph, among a mele of clues in the hunt for ‘Britain’s most hated man’; being a late 30s fat man, wearing a roll-neck jersey, who was supposedly seen in Wales, driving a gold or bronze coloured Ford. Every detail was bastardised by the public and the press to link Sewell to Malcolm’s murder… …as a suspected double murderer is easier to hunt down, but in truth, Sewell was innocent. The Mirror’s £10,000 reward led to a tip-off by an informant who claimed “I’m frightened. I didn’t like (ratting) and giving an address, but a policeman was killed… I’ve been told that (Sewell’s friends) have put up a reward of £5000 cash to find me. If they find me, I reckon they’d kill me or smash me up”. Desperate to stay mobile but hidden, Sewell avoided everywhere he knew; he dressed badly, didn’t shave, ate simply, pootled around in a crappy VW Beetle, and (through a Greek couple) he rented a grotty little lodging on a low-rent street at 46 Birnam Road in Holloway, North London. His room was shabby, the house was crowded, the wallpaper was peeling, and the garden was full of stinging nettles. It was exactly the kind of place a wealthy playboy wouldn’t live, but then, that was the purpose. 67-year-old widow Alice Pepper who lived in the top flat, said of Sewell, the ginger-bearded lodger in the first-floor front-room who she knew as ‘David’, “he was a gentleman. I took a fancy to him”. He kept himself busy by renovating his room, she told him the kitchen needed painting and he offered to do it. He was polite, kind, he always enquired how she did at the bingo, and she didn’t know he was ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most hated man’ and later said she was gutted “I could have done with the reward”. With a positive ID, Police kept surveillance on the house for several days. On Thursday 7th of October, six houses over north London were raided by the Police at the same time. Roads were blocked, alleys were watched and back gardens were covered, as the lead detectives sat in a window cleaner’s van, ready to strike swiftly as this infamous cop-killer was armed and dangerous. At 6:40am, the front door was forced. Across every floor, the coppers flooded in seizing any weapon or assailant including Sewell’s landlord who tried to jump from a window, as up the stairs sprang DCI Moulder, DCI Hardy, DI Brothers and the man who had led this massive manhunt, DCS Joe Mountsey. Awoken by the noise, Sewell jumped out of bed wearing his pyjamas, but before he could react, a full 40 stone of burly coppers pounced on him, DI Brothers thumped him in the face, they struggled, and before Sewell could reach under the pillow for what the press claimed was a sawn-off double barrelled shotgun, DCS Mountsey aimed a pistol at his head barking “If you have a gun, don’t touch it”. Sewell was cuffed, arrested, his last £500 was confiscated and the shotgun was found, already dismantled. Panayiotos Panayiotou and his girlfriend Nitsa were charged with providing Sewell with a ‘safe house’ with intent to impede his arrest, where it was proven he had lived from the start of September until his discovery, giving him a cast iron alibi (as well as no forensics) in the murder of Malcolm Heaysman. Held at Holloway Police Station for six hours, a convoy of cars sped him to Blackpool Crown Court, where an angry crowd booed him as he entered hidden under a sheet. Looking “defeated and empty of resistance”, he confessed to the accidental killing of Superintendent Gerry Richardson stating “I’m glad to be able to talk to someone. You have got to get this thing off your chest or you go mad”. ‘Fat Fred’ was held on remand, the manhunt was over, and until the trial, the case was forgotten. Sewell was questioned but never charged in connection to Malcolm Heaysman’s murder, he wasn’t a suspect in the case, his link was tenuous, and even before he was arrested, the Police had already said of the two suspects in the gold-coloured Ford seen near his cottage “we’ve a good idea who they are”. All the while, Malcolm’s killer was hiding in plain sight… …and the motive for his murder was locked behind an attic door. 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman was a man whose life was an illusion. Born in a city, but dressing like a ‘farmer Giles’, Malcolm managed the family business known as ‘Becks British Carnival Novelties’ and living his life surrounded by a world of make-up, costumes and disguise, he wore a mask of his own. Being shy and insecure, his first marriage had failed. In March 1969, he hastily married Rose Austin, a recent-divorcee with three sons including 23-year-old Roy Searl, and with Malcolm being so distant, their sex life was non-existent, she assumed because of the loneliness which plagued him. On their wedding day, Malcolm vanished for five hours to the locked attic above their shop, behind a door she was never permitted to enter, and where it was said that day, he held a wedding ceremony of his own. Their love was gone before it had begun, she went on their honeymoon to Spain alone, and with him only confident when he was drunk, she discovered his dark secret on the night they married. Finding him dressed in her silk nightgown, a red-faced furious Malcolm cried “tell anyone, I’ll kill you”. Again on his birthday she caught him drunkenly dancing dressed like a ballerina. So, when he was out, she slipped a large key from his jacket pocket, and entered the attic room to uncover his deepest secret. There was no Union Jack bunting, as inside she said was “sad but convincing proof of the truth”, walls of mirrors lined with row upon row of women’s dresses, shoes and lingerie, all exquisite and a Size 12. Their marriage was a sham to hide the man he could never be, and it drove them apart; they argued, they fought, she moved into the spare room, stating “I locked my door to stop Malcolm sleeping in my bed when I wasn’t there”, and although she tried to get him help, she had already stated the divorce from him by the time he was dead, as his threats against her had become violent and all too real. Her son, Roy, said “I killed Malcolm because of the way he treated my mother”, on many occasions he had threatened to kill her, he had left knives on her pillow, “my mother was sick… she begged me not to confront him, and said if she told anyone he was performing (as a drag act in Soho), he’d kill her”. Rose said “Malcolm ruined my life. I wish with all my heart that it could have worked out differently”. On Monday 28th of September 1971, Malcolm left for Wales to renovate his Carmarthenshire cottage, but also to escape his business, his stresses, his life, his family and his secret. Knowing he’d be away from London, and his mother, Roy saw this as the perfect opportunity to talk to Malcolm, not kill him… …at least, that’s what he said. Roy didn’t have a car, so a bronze or gold coloured Ford Capri was stolen from Dagenham, and with it later spotted by locals in the village of Gwyfre with its driver asking for directions to Malcolm’s cottage, it coincidentally matched the getaway car in the Blackpool heist, but by then, that car was impounded. Roy also couldn’t drive, so he drafted in a friend, Roy Owen Gibson, a man said to be “40-ish, swarthy, thick set, wearing a polo neck jersey”, later mistaken by locals for Sewell having seen his photo in the paper, and having a long criminal record, Roy needed a man who was ‘handy with his fists’ as Malcolm (who had underworld connections like ‘Fat Fred’ Sewell) had already threatened to have Roy “fixed”. Overnight, the two Roy’s tailed Malcolm’s car to Carmarthenshire, but lost him just shy of Llangadog. By dusk, 40 yards from his cottage, Malcolm was surprised to see his step-son waiting. Roy recalled “I said to him, it was time he straightened himself up and stopped threatening my mother. He told me to get out and said I could be ‘fixed’, beaten up. I thought of my wife and the baby and dived at him”, this being an account confirmed by Roy Gibson, as well as the forensics at the scene and the detectives. “I grabbed a big piece of wood lying on the ground”, a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post “and hit him with it more than once… when I left, I didn’t know I had killed him. I’m sure I heard him groaning”. From the start, Roy Searl was the Police’s prime suspect in the murder of his step-father, but as the press and the public hunted for ‘Britain’s most hated man’, in their eyes, Sewell could be guilty of anything. On Thursday the 7th of October 1971, the same day that Sewell was caught and the front page of every newspaper exclaimed ‘We got him’, ‘Cop killer trapped’, those same newspapers posted a tiny (almost insignificant) article hidden deep among the trash. On page 30 of The Guardian, it simply read ‘Step-Father Murder - Roy Searl, 23 remanded at Llandudno for the murder of London businessman Malcolm Heaysman’. There was no sensationalism, no baying crowds, and his name has been mostly forgotten. On Tuesday the 1st of February 1972, again being usurped as the public fever for Sewell’s incarceration reached a fever pitch, on page 17 in the corner of a regional newspaper it read “Roy Searl sentenced to life imprisonment at Swansea for the ‘cruel and brutal murder of his stepfather’. Searl had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty of manslaughter by provocation. Roy Gibson was sentenced to five years for aiding, abetting, and 18 months for taking a car without consent”. Oddly, in so many of these articles, Malcolm Heaysman was barely mentioned, and ‘Fat Fred’ wasn’t mentioned at all. (End) On Monday the 27th of November 1971, a 34-day trial began at Blackpool Crown Court before moving to Manchester. All five of the accused in the robbery at Preston’s jewellers – Charles Haynes, George Bond, John Patrick Spry, Thomas Flannigan and Frederick Sewell - were held at Strangeways Prison. Summing up, Mr Justice Kilner-Brown stated “it was a deliberately horrifying course of conduct which eventually led to your pulling the trigger twice and causing the death of Superintendent Richardson. It is necessary not only to sentence you in relation to your own part and your own character, but also as a warning that any man who shoots down a police officer in the course of his duty must expect the severest punishment which is permitted to the court”. With the trial deliberated by a jury of 12 men… John Spry was sentenced to 20 years for the attempted murder of DS Gerry Richardson, 25 years for the attempted murder of PC Hampson, 15 years for firearms conspiracy and 15 years for robbery. Bond and Flannigan were sentenced to 15 years for robbery but not guilty of the attempted murder of three other officers, and Haynes (who Sewell claimed was the ringleader) got 10 years for robbery. On Friday the 17th of March 1972, Frederick Sewell was found ‘not guilty’ of the attempted murder of PC Hampson and Sargeant Hollis, but ‘guilty’ of all other charges; he would serve 15 years for firearm conspiracy, 20 years for PC Walker’s attempted murder, and for the killing of DS Gerry Richardson, he would receive the harshest sentence the Judge had to offer – 30 years in prison, to run concurrently. Maureen, Gerry’s widow broke down as the sentence was read, with Sewell claiming he was “full of remorse for her loss”, and "I shall see him every day of my life. He just kept coming. He was too brave", yet eight months later, that didn’t stop him and four others rioting, and attempting a prison break. Held at Gartree Prison, ‘Fat Fred’ remained ‘Britain’s most hated man’ decades after his incarceration, being named anytime a heinous killer was mentioned in the press. By 2001, aged 68, having served 29 years, Sewell was released. So, did he learn his lesson? Was he full of remorse? It’s unlikely, as having continued his dealings behind bars, when he got out, it was said ‘Fat Fred’ was worth over £1 million. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
139 Upper Street, Islington (today) @Googlemap2025 Aug2023
This is Part One of Two of 'Fat Fred'.
On Tuesday 29th of September 1971, Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington was brutally murdered outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. Being 40 days into a 45 day man hunt, Police were seeking Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ having stolen £3.2 million in a jewellery heist, and in a 3 mile car chase, he sparked a national outrage by killing a policeman, and attempting to kill three others. But what connected him to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner?
THE LOCATION: (my Soho map I stopped updating as MapHub were demanding money)
This location is marked with a yellow P on the right hand side.
THE SOURCES: (this is a handful of those used)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a playboy car-dealer become ‘Britain’s most hated man’? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 139 Upper Street in Islington, N1; two roads north of the spat which ignited the Golden Goose killing, two roads east of the last lunch of ‘Ginger Rae’, and three roads west of the unsolved Christmas Day murder of the Kentish Town copper - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 139 stands a four-storey brown-bricked Victorian terraced house with an Italian eatery called Terra Rosa on the ground-floor. Like all Italian restaurants, we believe this authentic cuisine is centuries old having been passed down from Momma Maria to Uncle Luigi to Poppa Guiseppe in a Naples kitchen, when in truth garlic bread, spaghetti meatballs, Caesar salad and pepperoni pizza is not from Italy. We believe it because we want to believe it, as life is about truth, but it’s also about secrets and lies. Back in 1971, 139 Upper Street was a fancy dress shop called Beck's Carnival Novelties which rented and sold costumes, bunting, magic, masks and make-up around the world; with its factory at the back where the Almeida Theatre now stands, it had storage space in the attic, and above the shop was the home of 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman, his new wife, Rose, and occasionally, his step-son, Roy. This was the home where Malcolm & Rose had lived as ‘man and wife’, and on the night of the 28th of September 1971 where Malcolm began his ill-fated drive to Wales. But how did a jewellery heist, a car chase, three attempted murders, a national outrage, and the killing of a cop by Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ connect to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 321: ‘Fat Fred’ – Part 1. We’re born into a life, but for many, it’s not the life they wish to lead. Malcolm Heaysman was born on the 13th of July 1925 in Lambeth, South London, a grimy impoverished metropolis thick with the chocking smog of cars, trains and cranes that he lived among but never liked. Some said it was his dissatisfaction with his life that lead to his death; as he lived in the city, but loved the country, he often shunned his first name instead using his middle names of Ian and Donald, and said to dress like a ‘proper old farmer Giles’, he wore checked woollen suits and open-necked shirts. Described as shy, insecure and only confident when drunk or in the privacy of his own house, Malcolm was the son of Donald & Gladys Heaysman, and being raised amongst the colourful costumes and the sharp illusions of Beck's Carnival Novelties, this business became his life, whether he liked it or not. Established in 1919, oddly even their business was an illusion of sorts, as Malcolm was known locally as ‘Mr Beck’s, Gladys as ‘Bebe Quantock’, the shop and factory were on different streets and yet they were connected at the rear, and although this converted cinema had enough space for all their stock, Malcolm kept the attic room above their flat locked, which he claimed was full of Union Jack bunting. But everyone has their secrets and very few are sinister, so with Malcolm having run this legitimate business well since 1966, with Gladys & Donald well into their retirement, the plan was to sell-up the shop, the factory and the whole kitten-caboodle for the tidy sum of £43,000 (roughly £750,000 today). Yet something wasn’t right with his life, as every night he sat alone in his local pub nursing a pint, as the landlord said “he went out with a pound, but rarely with a pal” – a lonely figure lost in his thoughts. Three years prior, Malcolm met Rose, they fell in love, and a year later they married, but even though their lack of sex she blamed on his shyness and inexperience, a bigger secret had driven them apart. Through the night of Monday 28th of September 1971 and into the Tuesday, this large bellied 46-year-old man with slicked dark hair and thick black glasses got into his car and, alone, drove 170 miles west to the stunningly bleak wilds of Carmarthenshire in South Wales, and the foot of the Black Mountains. As a mummy’s boy, his mother had retired to the remote rural village of Gwynfe near Llangadog, and keen to either start-a-fresh with his wife and step-son, or maybe just vanish into obscurity, nine months ago he’d bought an old derelict cottage called ‘Godre Waun’, which he was slowly renovating. Only he hadn’t travelled here alone, as since Islington, someone had been following him. Witnesses told the Police that either a gold or bronze coloured car, a Ford, maybe a Zephyr, a Zodiac or something similar had stopped in Gwynfe asking the way to ‘Godre Waun’. A villager said “strangers don’t arrive here unnoticed”, describing the passenger as “early 20s, trendily dressed with shoulder-length blonde hair”, and the driver as “40-ish, swarthy and thick set, and wearing a polo neck jersey”. They watched, as around sunset, the two men (who never hid their identity) scoured the uneven lanes of this isolated wilderness, as their headlights were seen rising up the hill illuminating just sheep, gorse and sky, and as their beams went black, they were last seen crossing the fields to the lonely cottage. By the time they arrived, Malcolm had finished up; the cottage was shut, his tools were locked-up and as he drove his green van to the lane’s end, just 40 yards deep, he was shocked to see one of those men. That was the last thing he ever saw, and those angry words were the last he would ever hear. The next morning, as he hadn’t come home, Malcolm’s mother drove to the cottage. In the lane, lying cold and stiff beside his van, she found his body. Covered in blood and barely recognisable, his skull was broken and his neck snapped having been repeatedly beaten with a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post. Detective Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of Scotland Yard initially thought the motive for his killing was “a countryside vendetta” as local farmers were angry at the land being sold to Londoners, but the deeper detectives dug, the more it seemed like a grudge killing by business enemies, with the press stating ‘factory boss killed by rivals’ and ‘the violent killing was probably a result of a bitter feud’. One suspect was an associate of Malcolm Heaysman who was born, raised and worked in London. His name was found in Malcolm’s diary, he masqueraded as a charming playboy but was known to resort to extreme violence when he was broke, and he had a tawdry history of theft and armed robbery. Like the car’s driver, he was “40-ish, thick set and wore polo neck jerseys”, in a recent heist he’d used gold or bronze coloured Ford as a getaway car, he’d been seen in Wales just days before, and as ‘Britain’s most hated man’ at the time of Malcolm’s killing, Police across several counties were 40 days into a 45-day man-hunt for him, he was on the front page of every newspaper, everyone in Britain knew his name, and the Daily Mirror were offering a £10,000 reward for tip-offs leading to his arrest. On Sunday 3rd of October, barely a week after the killing, front-page headlines across the UK named him, and proclaimed “‘Fat Fred’ is wanted for questioning about the murder of Malcolm Heaysman”. ‘Fat Fred’s crimes were so vile they made Parliament debate if they should bring back hanging, his 30-year sentence for robbery, murder and attempted murder was deemed too weak, and even in the 1990s (20 years after his conviction), he was still demonised in the press as ‘Britain’s most hated man’. But who was ‘Fat Fred’, and why was Malcolm Heaysman murdered? Frederick Joseph Sewell, branded ‘Fat Fred’ by the tabloids was born in 1932 in Brixton, South London, a short walk from Malcolm’s upbringing, although whether they were childhood friends is unknown. Oddly similar, Sewell was 5 foot 10, 14 stone and described as a fat man with a chubby face, ruddy red cheeks, short brown hair and a huge round stomach, and just like Malcolm who dressed like ‘a Farmer Giles’, Sewell dreamed of being a tweed-wearing ‘Country Gent’ with a shotgun crooked over his arm. The similarities between both makes this so intriguing, as they were both fat, kept secrets, used aliases and had wives they couldn’t commit to, but we’ve no idea if they were best buddies or bitter rivals? Raised in poverty, as one of two sons to Frederick & Kathleen, during the Second World War he was evacuated to Cornwall and fell in love with farm-life. Post-war, he struggled to find a job he liked; as a printer apprentice, a page boy at Claridge’s and a salesman in menswear, but it wasn’t until 1951 that he found his passion by helping his brother run a pig farm in Kent, and fixing cars in his spare time. Said to be softly-spoken, generous and polite, Sewell was never short of friends, especially the ladies, and seeking the life and wealth of a ‘gentleman farmer’, his first crime (the theft of 300 ball-bearing cases) he was acquitted of in 1949, and when conscripted for National Service, over three years he went AWOL three times he said “to feed my pigs”, although while on the run, he married Joyce Twine. As a mirror image of the heinous crime which marked him as ‘Villain No1’, 15 years prior, Sewell had planned the armed robbery of the Ericsson Telephone Company payroll truck in Beeston, Nottingham. In the early hours of the 7th of September 1956, the truck trundled on Trafalgar Road, heading towards the factory’s main gates. Parked up on a side road in a heavy-duty Land Rover sat Sewell, his brother Roger and his 68-year-old father Frederick, all wearing masks and all holding heavy steel hammers. As the payroll truck passed, Sewell rammed the truck head-on buckling its bonnet, disabling the engine, and as the masked gang sprang into action, they smashed the windows of the payroll truck, coshed the driver, grabbed three bags, and in a ‘split-second’ operation, they vanished in a fast getaway car. In a series of stolen cars, using a gang of eight men and two women as well as George Bond who would be hired in the infamous Blackpool heist, Sewell’s gang got away with a haul of £39,000 (£1.2 million today), and although the Police set-up a nationwide manhunt, Sewell evaded capture for 14 months. As a rakish playboy, his lady-friends and mistresses risked everything to help him escape, with Mary Bolger & Diane Barry both being convicted. But once arrested, although a violent thug, Sewell quickly turned his charm on the Police and the Press to make himself seem like he was the innocent party. He denied that his ‘hammer gang’ came armed with violence in mind, even though a van was smashed, the street was strewn with destruction and the driver was hospitalised. He denied he was the boss, claiming “I was only the driver” and that an unnamed man had invited him into “something shady”. He denied intimidating the witnesses, although in court it was said “witnesses are unwilling. They all live in London and if bail is granted, may be interfered with”. So found guilty of a lesser charge, in 1957, Sewell was sentenced to three years in prison, but released after just two for good behaviour. Throughout, he maintained his innocence, he claimed he never knew where the stolen money was, and although the cash boxes were found buried with the lock broken, all of them were empty. Jailed on his 25th birthday, he was released just before the start of the 1960s, and quickly became wealthy. Frederick Sewell was a wannabe ‘country gent’ who liked the finer things in life… …he was generous when he had money, but nasty when he had none. By the turn of the next decade, Sewell was a big success. Having ploughed his money into cars, from a humble showroom in Tooting, South London, he had invested into seven other pitches, earning him £400-500-a-week, roughly £100,000 today. Nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’, it was said that “everything he touched turned to gold” and he fulfilled his dream of becoming ‘a rural squire’ with a £30000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. He ate caviar, he drove big American cars, as a ladies man he had 15 known mistresses, he hung out at the plushest clubs of Mayfair, and would easily blow £100 on a night out. And although he wasn’t much to look at, being wealthy and charming, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell had one big weakness – the ladies. After his first stretch in prison for the Beeston armed robbery, he should have returned to his wife, but instead, having met a young hottie called Irene Jermain, he spoiled her with jewels and furs, set her up in his farmhouse near Reigate and when Joyce found out, she divorced him. While seeing Irene, he met redheaded stunner Barbara Palmer, set her up in a £9000 Orpington house, and as father to her baby, Belinda, he spent half his time with each woman, keeping them both apart, and yet, while promising to marry both, he married Julie Lavinia, but binned her after a few weeks. In July 1971, Sewell posted his banns at Surrey registry officer announcing his intention to marry Irene on Tuesday 31st of August, with their dream to retire to the Isle of Sheppey and run a little hotel. That was his plan, but as fast as he earned money, he spent it, and by that summer, he was almost broke. Again, he’d claim he wasn’t the boss of the Blackpool robbery, and didn’t know the details of the heist. Sewell claimed “I heard of it when I delivered a car to Dennis Bond”, his cohort from the Beeston raid, who was a fellow car-dealer and had just been released for serving seven years for armed robbery. At a café in Streatham, they met Charles Haynes, part-owner in a London nightclub whose betting shop was in trouble, and Sewell claimed he said “I’ve seen a shop in Blackpool on a side road, it’s got pricey jewellery, but it’s not looked after very well”, and he knew “someone who could ‘fence’ the gems”. Sewell claimed he was ‘reluctant’ to take part in the robbery stating “I was a last minute replacement, Haynes was the organiser”, but because he was broke, knew the gang and was assured “nothing will go wrong”, expecting to steal £200,000 (roughly £3.5 million today), his cut of £30,000 was a fortune. The last two gang members were; John Patrick Spry, a career-criminal since he was a kid, who provided the stolen getaway cars – a green Triumph 2000 and a bronze/gold coloured Ford Capri – and meeting Thomas Flannagan in a Bethnal Green pub, he provided the second-hand shotguns and revolvers. Preaching non-violence, Sewell would later claim “I didn’t think the guns were even loaded”… …yet, being a heist which made ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell ‘Britain’s most hated man’, he alone proved himself to be not only the coldest and most callous of the gang, but also the most heartless and bloodthirsty. Situated on England’s north-west coast, Blackpool is a very old, slightly creaky seaside resort, where generations of working-class families have come to inhale the sea air, make sandcastles, ride a donkey, play in an arcade, eat an ice-cream and – while freezing to death - see the famous illuminations. Being cheap and cheerful, it’s famed for its friendliness, but here you wouldn’t expect to witness a violent heist, a gun battle and a killing spree so shocking, it sent shivers down the spines of everyone in Britain. Two weeks before their wedding, ‘Fat Fred’ and his fiancé Irene rented a flat on Cocker Street, two streets north of the jewellers. Hiding under the alias of ‘Mr & Mrs Johnson’, this gave him a chance to keep surveillance on the shop, and yet, if he wasn’t the boss of this racket, why would he do that.. …or what happened next? On Monday 16th of August, one week before the heist, the gang strolled up in the two getaway cars, yet dressed in dark suits and sunglasses like Mafia dons, Sewell ordered them to change, to stop drawing attention to themselves, and waving £20 notes about like confetti. Idiots! Apart from that, the jewellery heist (like the payroll raid in Beeston) had been planned to perfection. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9am, the gang parked the getaway cars in position; a Triumph 2000 by the jewellers on nearby Queen Square with its engine left running, they’d speed one mile north to Back Warbreck Road, hop into a bronze Ford Capri GT, and as a fast car, they’d floor it out of town to a third stolen car and head to the moors, hide the jewels and return when the heat had died down. The morning was quiet as the tourists had left and the locals were at work. The target was a jeweller’s called Preston’s, a small but prosperous watch and gem merchants hidden down a shadowy side street at 14 The Strand, just off the North Promenade. At 9:30am, with the door open, the staff busy and no customers inside, the gang spied as the two large windows were stocked with rings, watches and gems from safes - unaware that a violent bloodbath was about to spill across the back streets of Blackpool. At 9:40am, Sewell gave the signal. Wearing vague raincoats, they pulled scarves over their faces, slung bags over their shoulders, and armed with revolvers, they stormed inside like a whirlwind of chaos. Sewell later said of the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun under his coat, “I had no intention of letting it off. It wasn’t the plan. I just wanted to frighten people to do what I wanted and it worked that way”. At 9:41am, the gang forced the terrified staff onto the floor; “heads down”, “hands above your heads”, “don’t move”, “don’t say a fucking word” as they loaded bags full of loot, and although they grabbed as much good stuff as they did worthless tat, in total they’d steal £166,000 worth (£3 million today). All they had to do was run, they would be rich and no-one would get hurt. But the heist had gone awry before the plan was formed, as this supposedly poorly-secured shop had a silent alarm. Sneaking into his repair room when the gang too busy laughing at how rich they’d be, at 9:46am the manager tripped it, Lancashire Police HQ were alerted to a “possible robbery”, and a police car was already on route. Hearing a distant siren, the gang panicked, fled and as this bungling band of half-wits stumbled out of the shop, their bags tipped and they spilled a decent stash of what they’d nicked onto the pavement. At 9:49am, the first officers on the scene, PCs Hampson and Walker radioed in: “robbery in progress, Preston’s on The Strand, five men, at least one armed”, so firearms units were dispatched. And as a forewarning of their desperate violence, off-duty fireman Ronald Gale tried to stop the last man from fleeing, and with it likely to be Sewell, he barked at this hero, “move and I’ll fucking drop you”, only to thump the fireman four times in the stomach and with the shotgun’s butt, knocked him unconscious. Through incompetence, this well-planned heist soon descended into farce, as when this gang of five ran just 50 yards to Queens Square, even though their first getaway car was still there with its engine running, Haynes had locked the doors and they wasted valuable seconds as he fumbled for the keys. At 9:50am, the PCs radioed “getaway car is a green Triumph 2000, registration ‘Oscar Hotel Mike 674 Echo’”, and with it being ‘priority one’ Lancashire Chief Constable Bill Palfrey ordered an ‘all cars alert’, ‘road blocks to be set up’, and although PC Walker clipped the car and winged one of the raiders as it made off, the gang’s days were numbered as full force of the constabulary descended on Blackpool. This farce then turned to chaos, as flustered at having been rumbled, the Triumph zigzagged along 3 miles of backstreets desperately seeking the road where they had left the much-faster Ford Capri GT, but Haynes had lost his bearings as the PCs kept pursuit, followed by squad cars and armed officers. Entirely lost, having double-backed several times, the Triumph came to a hard stop when they found themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac, police vans blocking the way out, and Haynes struggling to wrestle the gear stick into reverse, and as Sewell shoved him aside so he could drive, his pistol fell to the floor and almost blew his foot off. He later claimed “that was the first time I knew the guns were loaded”. But was it? Breaking free, and swerving down Dickson Road and Egerton Road, as Sewell braked hard on Clevedon Road, the Triumph was rammed hard by four police cars, and with it crippled and wasted, the gang emerged, and this chaos turned to carnage. The so-called big-hearted playboy barked at the officer “move you cunts”, waving his shotgun as he spat “shift or you’ll get this you fucking bastards”, and with neither side willing to back down, Clevedon Road was set for a brutal and bloody fire-fight. With his teeth gritted in fury, Spry walked over to the crashed cop-car, and as PC Hampson sat dazed, he fired through the window at the unarmed man, shooting him in the chest, barely missing his heart. Emerging from the trashed Triumph, Sewell fired wildly at Detective Sergeant Hillis but missed, and as Spry & Bond fled down a side street, with ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell puffing and wheezing behind them, Flannigan was tackled by the Sergeant, and after a violent struggle, this gang of five had become four. The robbers were panicked and desperate, surrounded on all sides, and seeing no way out, as Bond, Spry & Sewell were chased further, from six feet away Sewell turned and blasted PC Walker in the leg. Seeing his officers gunned-down, it was then that Superintendent Gerald Richardson joined the chase. At 10:01am, on Carshalton Street, the threesome hijacked a Morris 1000 van at gunpoint as driven by two men from Edward’s the Butchers, it wasn’t fast, its handling was shit, it moved like a brick turd, and although it was better than running, having floored it, Sewell took a corner too quick, and on the crest of Sherbourne Road, he crashed it into a brick wall, buckling a wheel and making it immoveable. The detectives pounced on the stolen butcher’s van, and as its backdoors burst open, as Spry & Bond ran off, Bond shouted at Sewell “shoot them”, but his pistol had failed. Using the only weapon he had left, Detective Sergeant McKay drove his cop car at the twosome, running them both over, and with Spry unable to run, he was quickly caught, as Detective Constable Hanley hit Bond over the head with a broom handle. Both men were disarmed and arrested, but this violent bloodbath was far from over. 38-year-old Superintendent Gerry Richardson was a Blackpool boy, born and bred. Described as brave and fearless, having served his National Service in the military police, he rose up the ranks to become one of the youngest Police Superintendents in Britain, and had a no-nonsense attitude to criminals. Seeing Sewell flee, as a fit and sturdy officer, Gerry chased the armed robber down Sherbourne Road and into a side alley. Being grossly overweight, Sewell was out of breath, his cheeks were red, his face was sweating, and unable to take a step further, he stopped and turned to the unarmed detective. As a reasonable man, Gerry implored him “don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over”, and as he reached for the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, the two struggled, and the gun went off from inches away. Sewell later claimed “I was horrified to hear the gun go off”, yet, as the courageous officer staggered back in shock, blood pouring from his guts, his innards hanging out of his crisp white shirt, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell whose cruel and callous actions as a cop-killer would make him “Britain’s most hated man”, fired a second shot at point blank range, and leaving this married man to die in agony, Sewell fled. Transferred to Blackpool Victoria hospital, three officers were listed as ‘critical or serious’, several had broken bones or lacerations, and two hours after admission, Superintendent Gerry Richardson died of his injuries. It was a bloodbath which caused an outrage across Britain, as good men doing an honest job for low pay had been gunned down like dogs, leaving wives and children distraught or grieving. 100,000 people attended the funeral of Gerry Richardson at Layton Cemetery. Posthumously he was awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian honour for bravery, a street was named in his honour, a memorial was erected to remember him and the Superintendent Gerald Richardson Memorial Youth Trust was established to help the physically or mentally disabled young people who live in Blackpool. Every year, he is remembered. But fleeing, with Haynes not far behind, ‘Fat Freddy Sewell’ sparked a 45-day manhunt which made him ‘Villain No1’ in the eyes of the people, the Police and the Press. He was hated, hunted and wanted in connection with the murder of fancy-dress shop-owner Malcolm Heaysman, but what linked a violent cop-killer and a quiet little man with a ’secret’ hidden in his attic? The concluding part of ‘Fat Fred’ is next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. 
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Salisbury Street, Acton, W3 @Googlemaps2025 Aug2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY: Sunday 22nd March 2020, one day before the first Covid lockdown, 29-year-old mother-of-one Rhian Beresford left her flat terrified that her two-year-old daughter was being abused by a paedophile ring. On Salisbury Street, certain that she had found one of the gang, she ran him over in her car and stabbed another. But what let to this tragic incident, and how did it all go so badly wrong?
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month. SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What drove an ordinary woman to brutally kill a suspected ‘paedophile’? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Salisbury Street in Acton, W3; four streets east of the home of the predatory paedophile known as ‘The Beast’, two streets west of the tragic killing of Dylan Freeman by his mum, and a short walk north of the last hiccup by the hungry satanist - coming soon to Murder Mile. Just off Acton’s High Street - where pound shops spawn like bacteria in a petri-dish, vape shops are as common as a cold and the swimming baths probably host a competition for the best verruca - at the back of the Acton Centre sits Salisbury Street, a one-way thoroughfare comprising of a few flats, a bus stop, some sapling trees, two wide paths, and on the corner of Acton Lane, eight tubular bike racks. It looks innocent enough, like the kind of place a drunk may be cautioned for widdling, or an argument may erupt when an officious traffic warden slaps a fine on a car for overstaying by six seconds, yet this was the scene of a truly horrific killing, which was almost forgotten owing to the first Covid lockdown. It was a case fuelled by the fears of a nation as every mother held their babies tight, feeling let down by the law, as sex-pests and grooming gangs stalked every street. As every parent’s nightmare, out of abject fear for the safety of her two-year-old child, a local woman took matters into her own hands, and now, she may never be released. But what drove this ordinary and law-abiding woman to kill? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 320: The ‘Paedo’ Killer. On the 14th of May 2019, the UK’s National Crime Agency reported that “the number of Britons with a sexual interest in children may be seven times higher than previously thought”, after investigators found 144,000 accounts linked to paedophilia on the dark web connected to British citizens. Some sites which require those accessing it ‘to prove they have raped a child before being allowed to enter’”. The internet is a dangerous place, an unregulated haven of horror where evil ideas are formed, But these sick and twisted predators don’t just exist online, they are real, they are here, and many are anonymous. They could be anyone; a friend, a neighbour, a loved one, a trusted ally or a total stranger. Sunday the 22nd of March 2020 was a Mother’s Day like no other. Having spawned from China owing to a rancid market or a laboratory leak, Covid had swept the globe, and with Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France and Spain already locked down and with new countries falling every day, Britain was in the grip of panic buying, as the silence of isolation loomed every closer. That day, a speech was broadcast by British Prime Minister ‘Boris’ Johnson: “I want to thank everyone who's being forced to do something different today… who didn’t visit their mum for Mother’s Day but Facetimed, Skyped or rang them instead. Thank you for your restraint… thank you for your sacrifice”. After weeks of standing two metres apart, making makeshift masks out of cloth and hunting for hand sanitiser at inflated prices, the greatest struggle was staying in our support bubbles and self-isolating when sick, but what many of us forgot about were those for whom their home was not a safe place. 29-year-old Rhian Amie Beresford was a separated single-mother who lived alone in a tiny council flat at Hope Gardens in Acton; struggling to juggle her university studies in social care with being a full-time mother to her two-year daughter, as her relationship with her mum and sisters was fractured. She had isolated for weeks as her daughter had Covid-like symptoms, but even behind locked doors, she didn’t feel safe, as with the Police at breaking point and an investigation by Ealing Social Services into suspected sexual abuse by her daughter’s father having collapsed, she had no-one to turn to. And as a recent report proved, even though there are adults our children are supposed to trust, can they? (TV News) “…39-year-old Ben Breakwell was charged with 36 sexual offences against girls aged 13 to 16 while working as a music teacher at the West London Free School in Hammersmith. An investigation led by specialist officers also resulted in four offences of taking or making indecent images of children”. This horrific abuse had been going on for 7 years, yet it wasn’t an isolated case, it was one of many. Rightly terrified of being trapped in this 13-storey block of flats surrounded by strangers day and night for weeks or months to come, as the first lockdown loomed, petrified that her child was being abused by a paedophile ring, wearing just her nightdress, Rhian pulled her naked baby from her cot, and fled. Firing up her black Vauxhall Corsa, she had no idea where she was going, she just knew she had to get her somewhere safe, as if she stood still, they would both be a target, but moving, they stood a chance. At 12:40pm, she pulled out of Hope Gardens and onto The Avenue, a quiet residential street where men with puppies congregated too close to schools, and as the car sped, her child cried, only Rhian couldn’t stop as with the streets thronging with panic-buying shoppers, anyone of them could be ‘him’. She knew their faces and knew they may be near, but it wasn’t until she turned up Winchester Street, passing the western edge of Salisbury Street, that she realised how much danger they were in. We can never know if it was there, at that moment, that every fibre of her body and every synapse in her brain told her it was ‘him’, as walking east was a short overweight man in his mid-50s with short fair hair. It was just a passing glance, and being uncertain, it’s the only reason to explain why she double-backed on herself. At the High street, she turned right. At the swimming baths, she turned right again. And as she drove down this one-way street onto Acton Lane, at the corner of Salisbury Street, she saw ‘him’. As clear as day, unobstructed, and with the sun shining brightly, standing directly in front of her car as he looked right to cross the road was ‘him’ - one of the gang; a sex pest, a predator, a paedophile, just a hundred feet away. She hadn’t a violent bone in her body, she was alone and was too small to fight, but as a frantic mother with a parent’s instincts to protect her child, she knew it was either him or her. With a kitchen knife stashed under the driver’s seat, it wasn’t within reach, so with no time to think, but just enough time to react, she attacked with the only weapon she had to hand – her 1-tonne car. (sounds of an accelerator, speeding, a crash). That was just the beginning, as furiously, even though he lay buckled under her wheels, she made sure that he was dead. And as second ‘predator’ ran to his aid, grabbing the knife, even as the Police sped in, she stabbed the other ‘sex-pest’ several times, screaming aloud “I stabbed him, he’s a paedophile”. She risked everything; her life, her home and her future. She killed one man, she nearly killed a second, and she left her daughter without a mother as she may never be released – all to protect her child… …but what horrors happened which drove this ordinary, passive and unassuming woman to kill? (TV News) “…prolific paedophile Richard Huckle was given 22 life sentences after admitting 71 charges from 2006 to 2014 of the sexual abuse of children aged as young as six months old. Investigators found more than 20,000 indecent images and videos of his assaults, as well as a 60-page paedophile manual described as a "truly evil document". Speaking of one of his victims who was vulnerable and poor, he had bragged "I've hit the jackpot, a 3 year old girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody cares". Rhian Beresford was born on the 17th of July 1991 as one of at least four children to a Ghanaian family who in her lifetime had always lived in London. Whenever asked, she said her childhood was happy, but her lack of trust in men began at an early age, with a psychological report stating “childhood sexual abuse within the family and an incident where she was sexually assaulted by a man outside the family”. It was an unbearable pain she’d kept bottled up for years, only pacifying it with cannabis and alcohol. In May 2008, aged just 16, having struggled at school, she was first referred to Ealing Social Services as it was said “her mother was planning to take her to a boarding school in Ghana and leave her there”. She was young, vulnerable, alone and felt like she was fighting against the world that was against her. Clearly smart and talented, she studied drama at university, but plagued with anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts owing to unresolved trauma, she took a year out to try and rescue her mental health before completing her degree. What she needed was stability; a job, a home, and maybe a family? On the 7th of May 2013, Rhian was rushed to A & E at Ealing Hospital. Having become over-reliant on alcohol and weed to calm her brain, she was intoxicated, aggressive and suicidal. Assessed as “low risk of self-harm, or harm to others”, she wasn’t diagnosed as traumatised or in need of counselling, but with “no evidence of mental illness, the primary trigger was substance misuse” – a deadly mistake. In 2016, following her father’s death, the next three-and-a-half-years in which Rhian should have been under the care of West London Trust was later described by a tribunal as “suffering drift”, as not only did Rhian ignore calls, letters and appointments sent by doctors and psychiatrists to assess her mental state (sometimes for logical reasons like moving house), but follow-ups weren’t chased, her diagnosis was changed and she was batted between departments. No wonder she had no faith in her care givers. On the 24th of September 2016, Police were called to her flat, being suicidal as a friend had taken her life. Again, assessed as ‘low risk’, it was written up as ‘substance abuse’ rather than a ‘childhood trauma’, she was given anti-depressants, a crisis plan was signed off, but again, it all began to ‘drift’. By 2016, aged 25, she had learned to rely on only one person – herself… …but her life was about to change. On the 29th of March 2018, Rhian gave birth to a daughter who was happy and healthy. Being solely responsible for such a tiny fragile life rewired Rhian’s mindset and gave her drive and focus. She sorted out her unstable housing situation with the council, she received counselling through her church, she took St John’s Wort for her mood swings, and having quit the drink and the drugs, she was doing well. Assessed by her GP, although her baby’s father wasn’t part of her life, medical notes state she had ‘no thoughts of self-harm… the baby looks happy and well cared for’. But one side effect was a diagnosis of “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Mixed Personality Disorder due to substances in remission”. Again, a crisis plan was signed off, but again, it all began to ‘drift’ as her new diagnosis led to confusion. As a young single mum from a fractured family stuck in a bureaucratic loop between several mental health facilities, although her baby’s father hadn’t been part of her life since her pregnancy, he finally ‘stepped up’ to take custody of her daughter, giving Rhian a chance to sort out her life and her mind. Two years later, she brutally murdered a man with her car to protect her child. But why? (TV report) “…Damen Scott, a prolific paedophile was jailed for 21 years and put on the Sex Offender’s Register for life for 17 counts of encouraging others to commit sexual assault and rape on children and even a baby. West Midlands Police stated ‘Scott's repulsive library included 1000s of images of pain and suffering inflicted on children… fuelling the demand for even more victims to be abused’”. By the summer of 2019, Rhian’s medical notes state “she is no longer using cannabis or alcohol, there were no thoughts of suicide, her family are supportive”, but with repeated inconsistencies in her care owing to a confusing diagnosis, the crisis plan began to drift, and they were “running out of options”. When asked, Rhian said she was doing well; she was studying full-time for a degree in social work, she was taking Sertraline, a mild anti-depressant solely as ‘a preventative’, she had received counselling at university for extra support, and she no longer had suicidal thoughts. On the 8th of November 2019, a routine referral was made to the Ealing Crisis and Treatment Team, but this got lost in the system. Again, her care had begun to ‘drift’, but by then, Rhian was distracted by a much greater issue. In September 2019, Rhian took her 18-month old daughter to St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, seeking an examination “as she believed she had been sexually abused by her daughter’s biological father”. Across three months, an investigation was conducted by the Police, doctors and Ealing Social Services, with a family assessment undertaken as this was a very serious accusation, but by December “it was concluded that the threshold was not met for a full Child Protection Investigation”. A psychiatrist stated “there was consideration of whether she had transferred her own childhood sexual abuse onto her daughter’s father; that is she might ‘feel worried about her daughter in her father’s care, even if she is completely safe’”. Rhian’s mental deterioration was questioned, as well as her capacity to care for her child, but with this not followed-up, “her social care ended on the 23rd of December 2019”. In short, “some tentative non-specific suggestions in the Local Authority record that her mental health difficulties may have influenced her concerns relating to the allegations of abuse of her daughter”. By Christmas, Rhian’s mental health was at breaking point; with no faith in the care system, no trust in men and an unresolved psychological trauma whose treatment was masked by drugs and alcohol… …she needed help, but as 2020 turned, the world was bracing itself for disaster. (TV report) “…Kenneth Gordon, 68 from Jersey was jailed for 16 years and placed on the sex offenders register for life for indecently assaulting and having unlawful sexual intercourse with his young victims over a decade. He showed no emotion as they read their impact statements in court, with one stating ‘you made me feel worthless, I still suffer with depression and anxiety, I wake up screaming’. It’s likely he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, and it’s hoped that his victims can begin to rebuild their lives”. The first reports of Covid began on the 12th of December 2019, as a “cluster of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan experienced symptoms described as ‘atypical pneumonia’”. On the 31st of December, the World Health Organisation was informed. By the 11th of January, China confirmed its first death, and two days later, with the first international case identified in Thailand, the pandemic had begun. It’s easy to forget how terrifying it was, as everything we knew was slowly stripped away; our rights, our jobs, our income and our social lives, with access to friends and family restricted, and all flights, ships and cars stopped leaving the world eerily silent, and there was nothing we could do about it. Filled with a fear of the unknown, as the death toll rose and symptoms were said to be ‘flu like’, no-one knew if they had a common cold or the Grim Reaper was circling. On the 11th of March 2020, just 11 days before Rhian committed that murder, Covid was declared a pandemic, and as the world went into shutdown, there was no cure, with essentials like masks and sanitiser nowhere to be found. Everywhere was in chaos; shops were shutting, hospitals were overwhelmed and emergency services were at breaking point. Fearing that society would descend into riots and looting, not only did we all worry “what will I eat?”, “how will I earn?”, “what if I get sick?”, “what if my lights fails?”, “what if I need help?”, even the sanest citizen became more paranoid as everything we knew was taken away… …but it was greater for those in a mental decline. By Saturday the 21st of March 2020, two days before Britain went into lockdown and one day before the murder, Rhian had been isolating for several weeks as her daughter had “Covid like symptoms”. Living alone, with no-one to talk to, in a dirty badly-maintained 13-storey block of council flats, day and night for what may become weeks or even months to come, although it housed vulnerable single mums like herself, many were strangers, and too many were undesirables with criminal convictions. Trapped and alone, she tried to quieten her paranoid mind through cannabis and alcohol, but again, it muddied her thoughts, frayed her nerves and made her mistrust any men or authority figures after the collapse of the investigation into the suspected sexual assaults at the hands of her baby’s father. Rhian was convinced it was true, but there was no evidence. She believed her baby was being abused by a paedophile ring, but the only proof of this she had were the voices in her head. Like the childhood trauma which had plagued her, she’d kept that a secret from her doctors and psychiatrists, and being mis-diagnosed, she didn’t have ‘OCD’ or a ‘personality disorder due to substance withdrawal’, as upon her arrest, she was assessed as a paranoid schizophrenic - a brain disorder managed by medication. It was impossible for her to bury that thought once it had planted a seed in her mind, and the further she descended into the isolation of her tiny flat, the more she became convinced that it was all real. (TV report) “…at least 546 boys from six schools in Afghanistan were abused in a mass paedophile ring ran by its head teacher. One boy recorded his headteacher’s demands for sex sometimes in return for passing grades. Another told of a private room built in the school’s library where boys were molested, with students from poor families singled out because they were vulnerable. The headteacher currently holds a senior position in the Ministry of Education, and denies any of the boy’s statements as true”. Becoming fixated, Rhian believed that paedophilia was everywhere, as the vile deeds of sex-pests filled every news channel; whether new cases like Ben Breakwell, Richard Huckle, Damen Scott and Kenneth Gordon; old cases like Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, the Moors Murderers, Elm Guest house, Operation Yewtree and the Rochdale paedophile ring; to TV shows like ‘My Dad the Paedophile’ and ‘The Prince & the Paedophile’, and as if to prove that – for those in power - money can always buy silence, even an American President had openly bragged about getting away with sexually assaulting women. The algorithm had her in its grip, as the second she typed ‘paedophile’ into her device, that’s what it fed her, day and night, and as a paranoid unmedicated single-mother, that was all she would ever see. That night she hadn’t slept, as she was terrified that when lockdown happened, the paedophiles would come and steal her daughter, and as that nightmare plagued her, even cannabis couldn’t calm her. Sunday the 22nd of March 2020 was the last day before lockdown, as panic-buying flooded the streets. Exhausted and emotional, crippled by fear, even though she was only partially dressed, Rhian grabbed her two-year-old daughter and haphazardly strapped her into the backseat, wailing and naked, as her deranged mum sped in her Vauxhall Corsa, fleeing from the monsters who only existed in her mind. At 12:40pm, she pulled out of Hope Gardens, onto The Avenue and raced towards Acton High Street, her child crying as she was bounced from side-to-side as the car took a right, then another right. Rhian believed if she stood still, they would both be a target, yet it was as she passed the corner of Salisbury Street that in just a passing glance, she saw ‘him’; a short overweight mid-50s man with short fair hair. Rhian later confessed “I believed I was in danger… the voices said it was him". Only she didn’t know him, she had never met him, they were strangers and he wasn’t a sex-pest or paedophile - far from it. 54-year-old Stefan Melnyk was a good man, who was quiet and decent. As a Londoner born and bred, he was a former bus-driver “who knew London like the back of his hand", and as a trade union rep’ had “spent his life helping others”. But when his father got sick and his 94-year-old aunt suffered a stroke, he sacrificed everything to become their carer. He was the epitome of kind and caring, and that day, he was heading home having picked up some essentials for his loved one’s before lockdown. Rhian believed she was saving her child from a monster, when in truth, he was as innocent as her. And when she saw him, she chose to attack him with the only weapon she had to hand – her 1-tonne car. A team of engineers for Thames Water working nearby witnessed the scene. George Pantazi said “I heard a loud bang and the sound of screaming”, as the black Corsa mounted the wide pavement, and hitting Stefan at speed, his body rolled underneath its wheels. George recalled “I turned around and saw a man under a car screaming. We shouted at the driver 'Stop! Stop! There's someone under the car'”, banging the bonnet to get her attention, “but she didn’t stop, she ignored us”, and revving the engine as plumes of smoke billowed from the exhaust, “she reversed over the man, laughing”. Rhian truly believed she had stopped a paedophile from abducting her baby, “but before accelerating, trying to rev the car… she looked at me smiling and laughing… as she started driving the car forwards and backwards over the man underneath”, as she crushed him under her wheels, again and again. When the car stalled, George tried to give chase as Rhian ran from the driver’s side, but having pulled the kitchen knife from under her seat, she didn’t see a good Samaritan helping a man in distress, but another ‘paedophile’. He ran for his life, but as he fell, with a smirk on her face, she stabbed him in his chest and arms several times - his life only saved owing to the thick work clothes which protected him. A passing Police unit arrived within seconds, and with Rhian still armed, violent, spitting and screaming “I stabbed him, he’s a paedophile”, they had to Taser her to subdue her as she wailed "it was my mum, she told me not to tell anybody, she is a paedophile". Rhian was charged with attempted murder… …but having suffered multiple organ failure, cardiac arrest and traumatic 'crush' asphyxia, when Stefan died the next day in hospital, 29-year-old Rhian Beresford was charged with his murder. (Out) Research by the London Violence Research Unit states that “mental health plays a much greater factor in the UK’s homicide rate than drugs or gangs, with most killings being potentially preventable”. Every week in the UK, another person is murdered by a stranger, a friend or a loved-one, not out of greed or revenge, but simply because they didn’t get the mental health care they were crying out for. Diagnosed with untreated' paranoid schizophrenia, she appeared at Ealing Magistrates Court on the first day of the lockdown, and was held on remand at a secure psychiatric unit. Tried at the Old Bailey, she was said to be deeply remorseful, and via video-link on the 21st of December 2020, she pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm to George Pantazi – whose “considerable bravery” was praised in court - and guilty of the manslaughter of Stefan Melnyk by reason of diminished responsibility. Accepted by the Prosecution, on Friday the 19th of February 2021, Rhian Beresford was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order without limit of time. It was unreported who received custody of the child. Doctors stated that while on remand, she was “making good progress, taking her medication and was allowed visits from her daughter”, hence the Judge felt “she would be better served with doctors than being sent to a prison, and monitored by the parole board on her release”, which is where she remains. So, what drove this ordinary woman to brutally kill a stranger she had mistakenly believed was a ‘paedophile’? Paranoia, the media, a pandemic, and a chronically underfunded mental health system, where too many patients are diagnosed according to a textbook default, rather than as individuals. 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. 
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
27 Antill Road, Tottenham - scene of the attack on Girl A
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN: On Monday the 12th of May 2008 at 4:45pm, two gangs clashed outside of the McDonald’s on Oxford Street, London, leaving one man, 22-year-old Steven Bigby dead. It was the epitome of pointless, yet it became a mere footnote when the press realised what he was charged with. It was a crime so heinous, some said his killing was his just comeuppance, especially given how lightly his co-defendants were sentenced. But were any of this brutal gang properly punished for their heinous crime?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Were any of this brutal gang properly punished for their heinous crime? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Oxford Street in Soho, W1; two streets north of the senseless killing of Charlie Chirgwin, two streets south of Bryan Robinson’s racist attack, a few doors up from Jacques Tratsart’s family massacre, and one street south of the priest’s hate-filled hanging - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 185 Oxford Street stands a McDonalds, the creepy clown’s house of barely-edible burgers, where the less-literate stare at a poorly paid server with a scowling face (like a bulldog’s angry anus) having waited 30 whole seconds, only to slam down a quid, not say ‘thank you’, shove this excuse for food in, and squeeze it out, as made of chemicals, when the world ends only two things will exist; cockroaches, and the poo of McDonald’s patrons. It's a horrible franchise, where the dregs of society sit and grunt. Unsurprisingly being a haven for the Ill-mannered and short-tempered, this McDonald’s was the scene of a murder. On Monday the 12th of May 2008 at roughly 4:45pm, two so-called gangs – basically a group of unemployed boys who dreamed of being gangsters and never grew up – had a petty spat, the kind that even a 2-year-old toddler could resolve, which turned into a fight, and ended in a death. It was the epitome of pointless, yet it became a mere footnote when the press realised who the victim was, what he was charged with, and was due to be convicted of. It was a crime so heinous, some said his killing was his just comeuppance, especially given how lightly his co-defendants were sentenced. But how far should a punishment go, and could any of these boys have truly been redeemed? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 319: Live by Hate, Die by Hate. It’s an irony. As a ‘victim’, Steven Bigby was given a voice in death through his loved ones who painted a rose-tinted picture of his life, by raising the good, glossing over the bad and giving it a noble context. It’s something we all do as no-one speak ill of the dead. Yet, as his alleged victim - a child known only as ‘Girl A’ - had chosen to remain anonymous to protect what life she has left, her story is lost forever. Born in 1986, Steven Bigby known as ‘Biggz’ was raised in Homerton and near the De Beauvoir estate, two impoverished parts of Hackney, East London, where crime is endemic, and as his sister Charlotte said “It’s hard for a black guy to walk. He has to keep his head down if he wants to stay out of trouble”. Unlike many, he had brains, having left school with several GCSE’s, and being keen to do right by his mother Pearl, he had enrolled in a business course at BSix Brooke House College, and as a Christian, at times his faith in God was so strong that he had considered having a crucifix tattooed on his chest. As the middle child of three, times were hard as their father had abandoned them. As his friend Marc said “he never talked about his dad. It’s maybe obvious, but he had no father figure”. But his mother more than made up for that, and against all odds, giving her children everything she could and striving so hard that, at the time of his death, Steven’s sister was able to go to university to study nursing. Pearl sometimes worked as many as three jobs; as a carer, a receptionist and a cleaner, but by 2000, when Steven was 14, it all got too much, and as Charlotte recalled “that’s when the problems started”. In his mid-teens, Steven said he worked for a guy on Dalston market selling phones, but no-one really knew. Aged 16, he dropped out of college where a brighter future lay. He doubted his faith, believing that God had forsaken him. And as Marc said, “he looked up to the older gangsters in Holly Street and when he got older, he liked that people gave him a little bit of respect straightaway. He was all about respect. I think that’s maybe what killed him. He puffed out his chest to the wrong guy”. Instead of choosing the route his family had - focussed on hard work and decency - he learned from the lazy whose pathetic lives revolved around prison and parole, having stolen from the poor and the weak. Aged 22, he already had several stints in prison. Defending him, Charlotte his sister said, “he used to rob brothels, drug dealers, bad people. I don’t think he hurt anyone. It was dirty money”, as if these were the victimless crimes for an anti-hero who only did this to feed his family, not his ego or status. But every crime has a victim, and as you’ll see, ‘Girl A’ was treated as less than human. The countdown towards his death began when he joined the gang ‘Tugs from Africa’, an abbreviation of ‘Thugs from Africa’ (as proving you’re illiterate is supposedly fashionable), later changed to ‘Tugs from Around’, as they rejected the postcode rivalry many gangs fight over for territory they don’t own. Marc said, “It’s a brotherhood. We take care of each other. If one of us hasn’t got something, we get it for him. You rely on each other, not just financially, but for stability, emotional support”. But it’s also rampant with peer pressure, bickering, jealousy and fear, with no real understanding of what respect is and how it is earned except by a bunch of deadbeats who will either end up in prison or dead by their 20s owing to a misguided belief that they’re men, when in truth, they are nothing but lost boys. Marc later said “I wish people would give him credit for the good things that he done”, also admitting that as he was a “hungry guy” who wanted money, fame and possessions, yet others (who remain nameless) described him as “a wasteman” = someone worthless – as he’d scam younger weaker boys out of money or drugs, “as If he didn’t know you, he didn’t give a shit about you, the same way no one gives a shit about him now he’s dead”, or as the evidence shows, the same way the gang felt about ‘Girl A'. In the latter years of his short and wasted life, he’d committed muggings, dealt skunk, he robbed crack dealers – with his cohort claiming they threw it away “as no one wants that stuff on the streets”, and at the time of his death, he was accused of ‘wounding with intent and violent disorder’ having stabbed a man in a Tottenham snooker hall, and bafflingly, he was also bailed for the sadistic attack on ‘Girl A’. With dreams of making it as a rapper, he admitted to his sister, “I want to wake up, change my life. You know what my problem is? I’m not focused. I need to get back to college… to be a better person”. On Monday 12th of May 2008, Steven Bigby was meant to visit a recording studio to record some tracks and maybe change his life for the better, but having missed his bus, he and four pals went to the Foot Locker on Oxford Street to buy some trainers, and feeling peckish, they stopped off at the McDonald’s. Moments later, he was lying dead in the street, his life taken because of something so utterly pointless. As the press dredged through his criminal past, his loved one’s tried to ensure that his legacy wouldn’t be one of a petty wannabe gangster, but although he was never convicted of this truly heinous crime… …the question remains, would any of the gang who attacked of ‘Girl A’ ever be properly punished? It’s uncertain how many members of the 'Tugs From Around' gang there were, but at least ten attacked ‘Girl A’. Those named included Bradley Daley-Smith, Bruno Abrantes, Miguel Almeida, Opeyemi Ismail, Hector Muaimba and Steven Bigby, all in their early 20s and living in disparate parts of North London, with 19-year-old Jason Brew and 17-year-old Rogel McMorris, who was said to be the main ringleader. ‘Girl A’ was a 16-year-old Ghanian girl who was raised in Tottenham to a loving family, and with severe learning difficulties, she had the mental age of eight-year-old. Requesting anonymity, I can’t tell you her backstory, I can only tell you about the horror inflicted upon her, and the limited life she lives now. As happens in all trials, attempts were made to discredit the victim, even one with learning difficulties. Rosina Cottage QC for the prosecution stated “it’s the age old story of a girl with a number of sexual partners labelled as ‘dirty’. What had she done except to have sex with people who asked her to? She thought it would make her popular”, being mentally challenged and easily led, and let’s not forget, as all but one of these men were adults and she was only a child - this isn’t casual sex, this is paedophilia. Two days prior, 21-year-old father-of-two Bradley Daley-Smith admitted to having consensual sex with this schoolgirl, bragging “I did my thing with her and that was it for me. I’m a well-known womaniser, people know me for that. Having sex with someone is not a big deal”, summing up the gang’s attitude. Earlier on Wednesday 9th of January 2008, the night of the attack, it was said she’d had consensual sex with three unnamed men and later admitted to lying to the Police about a prior sexual assault in a car. In short, their defence counsel had painted her as a ‘slut’, but it can easily been seen that these were adults coercing a vulnerable child for sex, which was a tactic they’d used before, and would use again. Each man pleaded innocent, so when some (but not all) were tried at Wood Green Crown Court, ‘Girl A’ was forced to relive her horror. To protect her, she gave evidence by video-link. Due to her learning difficulties, parts of the legal process were explained by a social worker. And her testimony had to be broken down into 20 minute sessions, as her wounds made it difficult to talk, sit, or be still, as the salt from her tears irritated her disfigured face. Yet, as some of the gang sat wearing crucifixes to paint them as sweet little angels, some smirked and snickered at what remained of the girl sat before them. Wednesday 9th of January 2008 had been a bitterly cold winter’s night, as the heavy rain turned to hail on Antill Road, a quiet residential street south of Tottenham Hale tube comprising of two storey semi-detached houses from the last two centuries, which were sadly blighted by the area’s gang violence. At roughly 6:30pm, 17-year-old Rogel McMorris had lured ‘Girl A’ to 27 Antill Road, a vacant terraced house that was being renovated, being filled with tools, plasterboard and chemicals to strip paint. The prosecution stated “she was shy and insecure with learning difficulties“, having the mental age of an 8 year old “and thought she would be liked by these boys if she had sex with them”. But with McMorris having already texted the rest of the gang, “she had no idea what was in store for her”. As neighbours sat in the warmth of their homes watching telly, McMorris broke into this dirty derelict house, lured her passed the cold hollow ground-floor rooms, up the ramshackle stairs to the filthy first floor, and to one of the three thin bedrooms where on the bare floor lay a soiled mattress. She just wanted to be liked and so agreed to have sex with McMorris, but waiting for her were nine other men. Outnumbered and overpowered, these savages stripped this vulnerable and defenceless child naked. They forced her to perform oral sex on each and every one of them, violating her mouth for fun as this young girl swallowed what they made her to swallow, whether she cried or sobbed, that didn’t matter. Over the next two hours, the gang took it turns to rape her, savaging her vagina in this barely lit room, which was mostly illuminated by the stark lights of their phones as their filmed her terror. To them, she was a nothing, a nobody, just a warm hole to shove their penises in, and although she pleaded for them to stop by claiming she was on her period, not one of them did. None of them pitied her, as they continued laughing and filming, getting their jollies, only for many to later deny that they were there. In court, their selfish attitude remained when confronted by the video-link of the young girl whose life they had ruined forever. Rosina Cottage QC stated to the jury “these young men are arrogant. Do you get the feeling that many of them felt they should not be here? If they were all innocent that would be right, but the prosecution says they are not. You have seen them talking in the dock, some of them lolling around, and at times making noises such as laughter, even during the evidence of the victim”. But the two-hour gang-rape of this vulnerable child wasn’t the worst part of her torture. With their semen spent, as used condoms littered the floor, they wiped their soiled penises on a towel in the bathroom. To humiliate and torment her further, McMorris threw washing powder at her face, and although ‘Girl A’ was crouched, naked and screaming, they kept filming, as he scoured the house for something else to assault her with, having said she had ‘disrespected’ him by not ‘sucking his dick’. In the kitchen, under the sink, McMorris found a white tub of clear granules with a large red label. He claimed he didn’t know what ‘corrosive' meant, or what Sodium Hydroxide was, but as 98% strength caustic soda which the label stated was “for stripping paint and cleaning drains”, with no sympathy for the pain she’d endure, he only cared whether it would destroy the forensic evidence of their crime. ‘Girl A’ recalled “I didn’t know what (was) poured, but (it was) some kind of acid and it was burning… they were all around just laughing. I was crying and screaming”, as he tipped the granules on her face, genitals, buttocks, back and chest, as the chemical reacted with her sweat and burned her bare flesh. A burns specialist confirmed “she suffered severe burns to 55% of her body… specifically her genitalia”, and whether he read the label or not, by pouring water over her blistering skin, the granules turned into pure acid, leaving her screaming in agony, as large hot chunks of burning flesh fell from her body. Having used her, like cowards, they then ran from the flat, laughing, leaving her to die a painful death. No-one could ever understand the agony she endured, and continues to endure to this day. As the acid burned her lips and throat, a neighbour (coincidently an off-duty police officer) heard her muffled screams, came to the window, and seeing the gang flee, at 8:20pm, she found ‘Girl A’ on the doorstep, naked and burning, as caustic smoke rose from her red burning flesh and dissolved hair. Rushed to hospital, she survived, but only just. With extensive burns to her face, she could barely talk or breathe. Owing to the pain, the shock put her in a coma for several weeks. Unable to regulate her body temperate, being suspectable to infection, and having caused damage to her spine, she was left not only permanently disfigured for life requiring numerous skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries, but suffering extreme PTSD, 17 years on, she is still plagued by flashback, anxiety and depression. Judge Shaun Lyons said “she will need life-long treatment. It’s doubtful whether she can operate fully as a young woman”, as now being isolated, she’s petrified of returning to Tottenham. She said “I tried to forgive them, but it is so hard. I hope one day they will feel sorry for what they have done to me". Only they didn’t. They bragged about it. Witnesses proved problematic as Detective Constable Alex Newton said “a lack of co-operation by the locals made it difficult to investigate", but whether they refused to speak through fear of the gang or distrust of the Police, this was a vulnerable child who’d been gangraped, burned and left for dead. But as hard as the gang had tried to erase their crime, the scene was thick with evidence; with DNA on the towel, fingerprints in the bedroom, cell mast data from their phones, the photos and videos they’d taken (which identified some but not all of them), discarded clothes as they too were burned by the caustic soda, the used condom wrappers which littered the floor, a confirmed sighting of Rogel McMorris and several gang members, and the eyewitness testimony from the hospital bed of ‘Girl A’. Across the following weeks, ten men were named, arrested and charged… …but even with a wealth of evidence, barely any were actually convicted. On the 24th of October 2008, the trial began at Wood Green Crown Court in North London. ‘Girl A’ said she was raped by ten men, but ten never stood trial, as two were released, and the charges against 20-year-old Opeyemi Ismeil were dropped owing to insufficient evidence, taking the tally to just seven. As they all denied her rape and GBH, although still traumatised and in extreme pain, ‘Girl A’ was forced to recount her testimony, no doubt exacerbated by the stress of hearing their voices by video-link. Arrogant to the last, the self-professed womaniser Bradley Daley-Smith denied that he’d intimidated witnesses, even though, during the trial, some who said they’d seen him said they’d made a mistake. He blamed his co-defendants stating “what do you think I am, some kind of a mob boss? Half of those boys in the dock don’t like me and they have all said I wasn’t there. You haven’t got nothing on me”. Claiming he was visiting his girlfriend in a hostel when ‘Girl A’ was attacked, before assisting the Police with their enquiries, he checked the CCTV of himself signing in the hostel’s guestbook, which he took, and he was subsequently found ‘not guilty’ of rape by the jury, taking the accused down to just six. With four scars on the leg on 24-year-old Bruno Abrantes, John Settle OBE, a renowned forensic burns consultant stated they were “consistent with a caustic soda burn” like those found on ‘Girl A’, but with his defence counsel’s own expert confirming that these were old scars caused by an accident with hot oil when Abrantes was a boy, he too was acquitted of rape and GBH, leaving just five accused. Abrantes stated in court, “I feel good about the verdict. I have been innocent from the start. The jury did the right thing, it would have been a terrible mistake to convict me. I am not a rapist”, and as the gang of ten tumbled further, 22-year-old Miguel Almeida was also acquitted, taking the tally to four. On the 8th of December 2008, at Wood Green Crown Court, after an eight week trial in which ‘Girl A’ had relived her torture, sat in agony and was mocked by her arrogant attackers who had gangraped her, burned her, disfigured her and almost killed her leaving her physically and emotionally disabled, of the four gang-members remaining, just three stood before the Judge, as Steven Bigby was dead. Sentenced on the 19th of January 2009, 20-year-old Hector Muaimba would serve eight years for rape and a two-years for an unconnected robbery, 19-year-old Jason Brew to six years for rape, and as one of the ringleaders, 17-year-old Rogel McMorris to just nine years for two counts of rape and GBH. And as most prisoners who receive fixed sentences are released on licence halfway through, the family of ‘Girl A’ were shocked, describing it as “the worst day of our life. No conviction can compensate for what our daughter went through”, so rightly, the next day, an application was submitted to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland “to determine if they were unduly lenient". Julian Lewis, MP for New Forest East stated "such villains considered for release halfway through their sentences make a nonsense of imposing those sentences in the first place". Deborah Kitson, director of The Ann Craft Trust, said “victims with learning difficulties faced greater hurdles in getting justice, and are more likely to be victims of rape”. Richard Curen, CEO of Respond said "this was a horrific and cowardly attack that scarred and traumatised this young woman both physically and mentally. These sentences are another injury and I fear it will take even longer for her to recover". And Kathryn Stone OBE, CEO of Voice UK, stated "these sentences don't come close to reflecting the brutality and horror of this attack.. and send completely the wrong message to society" that evil will never be punished. On 2nd of July 2009, Lord Chief Justice Judge and Justices Simon & Blair deemed two of the sentences as "unduly lenient". Muaimba’s stayed at six years making him eligible for parole after three, Brew’s was increased from six to nine years and eligible after four and a half, and McMorris’ was increased from nine years to fourteen, meaning even if he served his full sentence, he’d be out before 2022. To many, even these punishments made a mockery of the law… …along with those laws there to protect victims of rape. At the end of April 2008, having been questioned about ‘Girl A’s attack, Steven Bigby was bailed. To his girlfriend, he said he was falsely accused. To his friend Larry “he was adamant he was going to clear his name”. And his sister Charlotte insisted “Steven was my big brother, he was not a violent rapist”. On Monday the 12th of May 2008, as ‘Girl A’ endured another painful skin graft, Steven Bigby who was also on bail for a violent stabbing, headed went to the West End to buy trainers and something to eat. The spat which ignited his murder was petty and pointless. At roughly 4:40pm, in the McDonald’s on Oxford Street (a place that ‘Girl A’ once went to, could only dream of going to, but probably never will again), a dirty look was exchanged between Steven and a rival gang from Waltham Forest. Like all boys pretending to be men, his friend Marc later stated “when the altercation started, we would have got on top of it right away. We would have pulled out our shanks”, meaning knives - to show how brainless they truly were, being too thick to talk or defuse it – continuing “I guarantee two or three of the people Biggz was with had a knife. Maybe a little 38 handgun. We would have got on top of the situation”. And that’s why he died, over a perceived slight of respect that as a suspected rapist, he hadn’t earned. As the dirty look was given, a fizzy drink was then thrown (being the way a petulant child would react when reprimanded by his mummy), and although the spat seemed like it had passed, as Bigby exited the door of McDonald’s and onto the bustling Oxford Street, a four-inch blade was thrust in his chest. Acting Detective Chief Inspector Bob Mahoney said Bigby was stabbed with a "bog standard, horrible knife… and the incident lasted no more than one, maybe two minutes”, unlike the humiliating torture and rape of ‘Girl A’, which lasted two hours, and the damage of which would scar her for a lifetime. His friend, Larry said he saw him pitch forward, mutter something, collapse and die in his friend’s arms, unlike the cowards who attacked ‘Girl A’ and left her to die burning in horrific pain. And as “Biggz was looking into my eyes, he couldn’t say anything”. But if he could, I doubt it would have been an apology. For this gang, life was all about ‘respect’, but where’s the respect in gangraping a vulnerable child? Three days later, 18-year-old Anthony Costa of Walthamstow was found guilty of manslaughter, and unlike the “unduly lenient“ sentences issued to three of the ten men accused of raping ‘Girl A’, Costa was given an indeterminate sentence to protect the public, owing to the seriousness of his offence. Being dead, the charges against Steven Bigby were subsequently dropped. As an additional slap in the face to the family of ‘Girl A’ and an insult to our justice system, many had felt – rightly or wrongly - that his punishment was justified, with Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail writing that his death was “no great loss. Sounds like whoever killed him did us all a favour”, with an anonymous blogger stating that “it was a shame we can’t round up all the guys like him, and let them stab each other to death”. Some may decry this draconian attitude of an eye-for-an-eye, especially given that he wasn’t convicted in a court of law for the rape and GBH that his friends and family are certain he did not commit. But with the Police stating “Steven Bibgy would have been convicted… he would definitely have been found guilty, as his DNA was all over a towel in the bathroom”, did he live by hate and die by hate? 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is Part Two of Two of The un-Holy Trinity.
On Friday 6th of January 1967, 17-year-old Bernard Oliver vanished from Muswell Hill. 10 days later, his body was found 85 miles away in Suffolk. He had been strangled and assaulted, with his body cut into eight pieces. But who had abducted him, and why?
THE LOCATION: (note I stopped updating the map, as MapHub were demanding money)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Who murdered Bernard Oliver, and why? Find out on Murder Mile. This is The Heath, also known as the Wheatsheaf Crossroads near the village of Tattingstone in Suffolk, 4 miles from Ipswich where it was believed that Bernard was raped, strangled and dismembered, and 82 miles from Muswell Hill where he last seen alive, then abducted, lured away or left without reason. With no sightings of him for a week, he ended up in a place he didn’t belong, there were no hints that he was held captive, restrained or mistreated, having been fed, and given a haircut and a manicure. Two days before his body was found and ten days after his disappearance, possibly in a warehouse in Ipswich, he was ‘expertly dissected’ by a professional, stripped of any ID, cut into eight pieces, stuffed into two old suitcases - with a shipping label, a set of initials, a matchbox, a tea towel, his sports jacket and a jewellery receipt, which may have been red herrings to confuse the detectives – and on Monday 16th of January 1967 at 9:20am, both suitcases were found, having been carelessly dumped in a hedge. It was a murder which posed more questions than answers as the Police had no suspects, sightings or motive; as why did he vanish, how did he get there, and why didn’t he flee, as it hadn’t all the hallmarks of a typical abduction, and no-one even knew if it was the same person who fed him, then killed him. The Wheatsheaf Crossroads was an odd place to dump the body parts, as although isolated, with no streetlights, few houses and farmland for as far as the eye can see, there was a real risk of the killer or killers being seen, as nearby was a pub, Folly Farm, and the A137; a busy rural road between Ipswich, the city of Colchester, the docks at Harwich, and many ships heading to Denmark and The Netherlands. A high level of care was taken to ensure that Bernard’s body wouldn’t be identified, and yet he hadn’t been buried, possibly due to several nights of frost which made the ground too hard to dig, as even Fred Burggy the farmer had to plough his field a second time. But what baffled the detectives was why the suitcases weren’t then hidden somewhere else having been hastily tossed into a hedge of bracken. It was possible, even here at an ungodly hour in the midst of winter for a culprit to be seen and panic. Many witnesses reported alleged sightings of a suspicious man with a suitcase – some weeks, months, years, and even decades later, resulting in cloudy recollections owing to time, bias and facts gleaned from the newspapers - but one sighting of the so-called ‘Trilby Man’ is very credible, as it was reported just two days after the body was found, and well before anyone knew anything about the case itself. On Monday 16th of January 1967 at 1:15am, eight hours before the suitcase were found, Sheila Foulser, a 24-year-old hairdresser was driving south along the A137 from Wherstead, just south of Ipswich. She stated “It was rather foggy”, weather reports confirm this hence her speed was slow and cautious. “I stopped to turn left at the crossroads” leading onto Church Road heading to Tattingstone village, “I noticed a man about 30 feet away, carrying a suitcase” – this was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, it was cold, he was carrying a suitcase and he was nowhere near a taxi, a bus or a train. “He was walking in the direction of Tattingstone on the Harwich Road. I noticed him because at that time of night he was the only pedestrian I had seen. I picked him out in the headlights. He was middle aged and wearing a dark Trilby hat and a long trench coat”, but being foggy, that’s all she could see. She had been spooked earlier in the drive, “as a car had been following about three yards behind me with its headlights on for about five miles”, starting near to Ipswich, “but at the spot where I saw the man with the suitcase, the car behind me stopped, then turned in his direction and appeared to stop ahead of him”, just mere yards from the hedge at the crossroads where the suitcases were dumped. She didn’t see it happen, as she had driven off, with the car no-longer following her. She was unable to identify its make or the driver as it was dark, and we have only limited details on ‘The Trilby Man’. Psychologists state any killer would likely remove a body from any place they’re associated with, to a space they know but have no connection to, having travelled no more than 4 or 5 miles from the killing in order to distance themselves from any evidence, and without being found with a body in their car. Ipswich seemed a likely location, and this sighting happened 24 hours after Robert Thurston said he saw a well-dressed, middle-aged, long-faced man in long black mac’, dark trousers and polished shoes exit the R&W Paul Building between 1am and 2am carrying two suitcases and wearing surgical gloves. So, was this Bernard’s killer or killers, were they dumping the body in panic, were they innocent men, or was this a coincidence? Neither man was found, so we’ve no way of knowing if any of it is real. But it was plausible, very plausible… …and it may even have led to the culprit. The investigation was thorough. Headed up by Detective Superintendent Harry Tappin of the Met’s Murder Squad, 50,000 people were questioned, 30,000 homes were checked, 3000 cars were stopped at the road block, 2000+ statements were taken, 1800 calls and 670 letters received, with 6000 people in the villages nearby and 15,000 people in Ipswich questioned, with the same done in Muswell Hill. It was thorough, but riddled with the bias of its day. Bernard was raped, therefore it was assumed that his killer had to gay, and being just months before homosexuality was partly decriminalised, detectives “interviewed every gay man in London”, as being the villain of the era, the less-educated believed that every gay was a sadist and a paedophile, and as they ran rampant in the streets, no-one was safe. Yet, whenever a female was raped, the Police didn’t question every heterosexual male as a likely suspect. It began as gossip, when staff at the King’s Head in Stutton (2 miles south of Tattingstone) told Police that seamen were having all-night drinking parties in a nearby cottage. It was checked and ruled out, but 150 detectives questioned every gay man charged as a ‘sex offender’ in the Home Counties and East Anglia, including anyone who had been arrested for being gay, as it was still a criminal offence. Rightly, even though there wasn’t a centralised Missing Person’s Register, Police cross-referenced the details of the 120 boys, aged 12 to 20 who had gone missing in the previous year, as – like Bernard – many were young, handsome, easily led, and were fed and groomed by someone prior to their deaths. Similarities were found between the murder of Bernard Oliver, and 14-year-old Michael John Trower. Like Bernard, Michael – who lived in Hove, 116 miles south of Tattingstone – came from a good family and went to a special needs school. For no known reason, on 19th of September 1966, he ran away from home and a week after Bernard’s body was found, his dismembered skull, a limb, a plimsole and a sock were spotted in a shallow grave at Sweet Hill, an isolated spot not far from the A23 to Brighton. Michael was buried, Bernard was not, but if this was the same killer, had he learned from other killings to stuff the body parts in a locked and buried suitcase, where the foxes couldn’t dig them up? Or again, was this just a coincidence? Michael’s killer was never found, so we shall never know. As was stated, the Police “interviewed every gay man in London”, especially anyone who was famous, wealthy, powerful or a threat by the Establishment. The three most infamous suspects was the East End gangster Ronnie Kray, the music producer Joe Meek, and the pirate radio DJ Tony Windsor. Chris, Bernard’s brother stated “I have an idea that the Kray’s had something to do with it. They used to go to this house”, a 7-bedroomed period building in Bildeston called ‘The Brooks’, 12 miles north-west of Ipswich where “rent boys were brought in”. It was well known that Ronnie Kray was bisexual, had a fondness for ‘young boys’, that he organised orgies attended by politicians such as Lord Boothby, Jeremy Thorpe and Tom Driberg, that he ‘procured’ for these orgies underage boys (some as young as 10), and that The Kray’s arrest was delayed as “10 Downing Street had told the police to back off”. In 2015, documents released under FOI showed that MI5 (Britain’s Security Service) had used the Kray twins to gather intelligence on homosexual politicians and established figures, in return for protection. But they didn’t purchase ‘The Brooks’ until two months after Bernard’s body was found, there was no evidence that The Kray’s abducted or murdered a child, the killings they were convicted of (George Cornell and Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie) were shot and stabbed, not raped and dismembered, and Ronnie’s so-called confession to his former cellmate, Pete Gillett in the BBC documentary Reggie Kray: The Final Word in 2000 was that he’d murdered ‘a young gay boy’, which came to light five years after his death. It's a tenuous link, and as always, people have jumped on it because it’s sensational. The next high profile target was gay record producer and songwriter, Joe Meek. On 3rd of February 1967, two weeks after Bernard’s body was found, in his North London flat, Joe killed his landlady Violet Shenton with a single-barrelled shotgun he’d confiscated off a friend, then turned it on himself. They’d argued over unpaid rent and loud music, he struggled with debts, drugs use, bipolar and schizophrenia, and after his death, the tabloids fabricated many of the myths which are still today mistaken for fact. One was that Bernard had worked as a tape-stacker in Joe’s recording studio, which is unproven. That he had killed himself three days after Bernard was buried, only Joe had actually killed himself three days before. That he was yet another possible boyfriend of Ronnie Kray. And – as a homosexual with a 1963 conviction for importuning for immoral purposes in a toilet – it was suggested his mental state was exacerbated as Police interviewed every gay man in London. But given that he had no connections to Ipswich, Suffolk, and had an alibi for the days around Bernard’s murder, why would he be worried? Again, it's tenuous, but it’s a more saleable story than Bernard being murdered by a nobody. Besides, neither Joe Meek nor Ronnie Kray had an ‘expert’ skill in dismembering bodies, similar to a surgeon. The next target of many was a Tony Withers alias Windsor, who was once one of the highest paid DJs in Australia, but came to the UK in 1962 to work as a radio DJ onboard the pirate radio ship ‘MV Galaxy’ for Radio London – a ship harboured off the coast of Frinton-on-Sea, 12 miles from Tattingstone. He was questioned by the Police in January 1967 about Bernard’s murder, and according to Mary Payne, who worked with him at Radio London, "he was gay, an alcoholic, and a close friend of Joe Meek". Mary later stated “we have since discovered many things about the station's personnel and associates that have saddened us deeply. It's horribly sleazy stuff", as several 1960s and 70s DJs on MV Galaxy have been convicted of heinous sexual offences, like Chris Denning, who had a 1959 conviction for distributing pornography, and in 1974 and 1985 for gross indecency and the indecent assault of a child. In 1967, Tony Windsor was dismissed owing to his alcoholism, and when interviewed by the Police, it was said that they shared this dark joke about Bernard’s murder, stating – “we are seeking a man who boarded a bus in Ipswich with two suitcases, he asked for one full fare, and two halves please". Tony Windsor was dismissed as a suspect, but with detectives investigating whether the initials ‘PVA’ found on the suitcase could belong to a Dutch national, they had the captain on the MV Galaxy submit a list of all the crew members names, as well as those who left the ship and disembarked in Holland. With no evidence, these three suspects were never arrested or convicted… …but there were two prime suspects with links to something much darker, known as The Holy Trinity. In 2004, under the Freedom of Information Act, documents released revealed that the Police’s prime suspects in the murder of Bernard Oliver were two doctors, Dr Martin Reddington and Dr John Byles. Martin Bruce Reddington was born on the 26th of June 1931 in Colchester, 20 miles south of Ipswich and 15 miles shy of Tattingstone, being two places he knew well, but had no direct connection to. As one of several sons to Yvonne and Mortimer, he was raised in affluence and privilege as his father was a respected gynaecological surgeon, and his son Martin followed him becoming a general practitioner. Records show that from 1962 to 1969, Dr Martin Reddington lived at 18 Woodland Gardens in Muswell Hill, a few streets south of Bernard’s home, and as a GP, he had a surgery in Muswell Hill Broadway, the same street that Bernard was last seen walking along. Dr Reddington may have been his doctor, but could have chatted to him at the cinema, the laundrette, or the Wimpy bar where he had worked. In 1965, two years before Bernard’s murder when he was 33 (the same age range that the pathologist said the killer would most likely be) Dr Reddington was charged with the buggery and indecent assault of teenage males, but as it never led to a conviction, he remained in his job and home in Muswell Hill. Then in 1971, four years after Bernard’s killing, with those same crimes coming back to haunt him, before he could be charged, he fled to South Africa, and then to Australia, he lived in Marrickville and Turramurra, a suburb on Sydney's Upper North Shore, where he had a surgery and worked as a doctor. There were several attempts to extradite him to the UK, but without enough evidence, Dr Reddington was never interviewed regarding the indecent assault of young males, or the murder of Bernard Oliver. In February 1977, Reddington was charged with the indecent assault of a young male while working as a GP in Turramurra, and although he made no plea, but was later cleared at Sydney Central Court. Sometime in the 1980s, he returned to the UK, he lived and worked in Surbiton, Surrey, and died on the 29th of March 1995, aged 63, leaving an estate of £250,000 (roughly half a million pounds today). When Bernard’s murder was re-opened in 1977, a private investigator said she recognised the suitcase with the ‘PVA’ initials as belonging to three men who used a laundrette in Muswell Hill. Shown photos of the Police’s prime suspects, she picked out Dr Reddington. But this was 10 years later, so was she right, was her memory clouded by time, bias and the newspapers coverage of the case, or had these suitcases got anything to do with Dr Reddington at all, as although the Police believed that the initials, the shipping label and the tea-towel could be red-herrings or a clue to the killer’s identity, the suitcases could easily have been found in a skip, and relate to someone unconnected, who was long since dead. The other primary suspect in Bernard’s murder was Dr Reddington’s friend, Dr John Byles. John Roussel Byles was born on the 27th of January 1933 in Hammersmith, West London as one of two siblings to Hilda & John Byles. Like Dr Reddington, he was raised in privilege, as his father was a highly respected doctor and he too followed his father working in obstetrics and gynaecology, which is how he may have met Dr Reddington, and as a nod to the shipping label, he had worked as a ship’s surgeon. His history is harder to pin-down, as he moved from place-to-place, but he was raised in Bromley, had lived in Kent, Kensington and Muswell Hill, and the same year he had obtained his doctor’s diploma, he was charged with indecently assaulting a 16-year-old boy in the Earls Court flat that he shared with a marketing executive called James William Halsall. They pleaded ‘not guilty’, they both claimed that the boy was lying, and on the 11th of November 1963 at the Old Bailey, they were both acquitted. In April 1967, four years later, in connection to Bernard Oliver’s murder, when detectives interviewed “every gay man in London” with a conviction for sexual offences, they searched Dr Byles’ Ennismore Gardens flat in Knightsbridge. They found nothing, but why would they, as with the culprit said to have a high level of “criminal sophistication”, would Bernard’s killer leave any evidence in their own home? That same year, along with that search, Dr Byles was interviewed “as one of two men thought to have been seen talking to Michael John Trower”, the 14-year-old boy from Hove whose dismembered body parts were found in a shallow grave near Brighton. He wasn’t charged and the case remains unsolved. In 1973, both Reddington & Byles were suspects in the murder of another boy in London, and with Dr Byles being investigated by Scotland Yard for more than 20 alleged indecent assaults, they both fled to Australia. On the 17th of December 1974, Byles was arrested in Melbourne for the gross indecency of a minor, and pending his extradition back to England, his $2000 bail was paid for by Dr Reddington. He was due appear at his extradition hearing on the 27th of December 1974, but instead, he fled. Three weeks later, on the 19th of January 1975, three days after the 8th anniversary of the discovery of Bernard's body, he booked into a room at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Proserpine, Queensland, under the alias of John Matthews, and killed himself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 41. Beside his body, he had written three notes; one addressed to his family in London, the other to his friend Dr Reddington, and a third to Scotland Yard, in which he apologised for his actions, but he made no reference to Bernard Oliver. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Proserpine General Cemetery. When he took his life, he was almost broke, unemployed, lonely and a wanted man, as just four days prior, he’d been named at Leeds Crown Court in Northen England as a ringleader in ‘The Holy Trinity’. So, who killed Bernard Oliver and why? It has never been solved, but is the evidence right there? Bernard Oliver was 17, but looked 12, as he was small, pretty, slim, and as a student at a special needs school, he was said to be “easily led”. He talked of leaving home, but hadn’t and wasn’t dressed for it and that night, he went to a café and told his friend Christine Willars ‘well, I’m going off to see a friend’. Was he chosen because of his pre-pubescent looks, was he hand-picked by someone who knew him, was he gently lured away from Muswell Hill by someone he truly trusted, maybe a teacher or doctor, who bought him a meal and a necklace for his ‘girlfriend’, plied him with cigarettes, and promised to fulfil his dreams – “he said he’d like to work on a farm with animals” – not realising it was a nightmare. Maybe no-one spotted his abduction, because he wasn’t snatched, he was coerced by a kindly friend? There were no confirmed sightings of Bernard from Saturday 7th to Monday 16th January, so maybe – given he had no restraint marks to his wrists and ankles suggesting he wasn’t held captive – had his abductor kept him sweet by driving him to Suffolk, where for a week he worked on a farm, earning some money, and living his dream, having been reassured “it’s okay, I’ve squared this with your dad”? This was something only a man of wealth and power could do, having given him food, a bed, a haircut and a manicure, believing he was being treated well, when in truth, his abductor had a darker motive. On Saturday 14th of January, Bernard was raped, receiving two lacerations and a few bruises as “he put up a vain fight for his life”. But did he not flee as he was drugged, then dismembered ‘expertly’ by a doctor or a surgeon, and disposed of as - many young boys were - having served their purpose… …for a sadistic child pornography and paedophile ring called ‘The Holy Trinity’. On the 15th of January 1975, four days before his suicide, Dr Byles was named at Leeds Crown Court as one of several men accused of the grooming, abduction and sexual assault of boys, some as young as 9, at the Holy Trinity Church in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Having fled to Australia before he could be charged, Byles was described as ‘evil’ and a ringleader in a network of child rape and porn. In the dock, his three perverted co-conspirators stood in his absence; Reverand John Fairburn Poole, vicar at the Holy Trinity Church, Raymond Varley an ex-child care-worker, and Clive Wilcock, a school teacher, who like Dr Byles were the kinds of adults that vulnerable children were told they could trust. Byles - who had prior allegations hanging over him for luring boys to his south London surgery, plying them with alcohol (maybe tranquilisers) and photographing the child’s rape, as well as a further claim that he had assaulted, murdered and cut up a cabin boy as a ship’s surgeon – he used dark isolated spaces where no-one would hear the children scream, such as the crypt under the Holy Trinity Church. Having been fed a last meal, lured with promises, and given a haircut and a manicure so they’d look pretty, with each young child drugged and raped, ‘The Holy Trinity’ posed them, photographed them, and sold these naked and explicit images to pornographic magazines in Denmark and The Netherlands. On the 15th of June 1975, Reverand John Poole, Raymond Varley, Clive Wilcock, and Dr John Byles and Jack Nicholls in their absence were convicted of conspiracy to contravene the Sexual Offences Act, the Obscene Publications Act and the Post Office Act, as well as the gross indecency and assault of minors. Poole denied taking part in the abuse and was sentenced to three years, Wilcock to four years, along with Raymond Varley who admitted to 7 charges of indecently assaulting boys aged 9 to 13, and in the 1980s he abused boys in Albania, Serbia, India and Thailand while working as an English teacher. An extradition application later failed as he claimed he’d dementia and he died in a Goa prison aged 63. Varley’s close associate was Dr Freddy Peats, a notorious doctor and a social worker for the Catholic Church, who participated and co-ordinated the international abuse and trafficking of young children. Dr Byles was never sentenced as he was already dead, and Dr Reddington was suspected, but never tried, even though as a known associate of Byles they were suspected of several assaults and murders, but there was never any hard evidence to connect either man to the suitcases or the killing, and it is uncertain (and unlikely, given the distance) that Bernard Oliver was brought to the Holy Trinity Church. In 1968, with the murder site still missing, no confirmed sightings and no evidence against any suspect, the investigation into Bernard Oliver’s murder collapsed, and no-one was brought to justice. As a cold case, it’s re-opened every decade, or when new evidence emerges, but little progress has been made. Chris, Bernard’s brother said "I wish it had been solved before my father, my mother and Tony died. I don't know if it ever will be”. As of today, it’s remained unsolved for 58 years, and even with advances in DNA - with Bernard’s jacket lost, the suitcases improperly stored for modern forensic purposes, and if he was murdered at R&W Paul warehouse in Ipswich, with that being renovated into flats - another piece of the puzzle is erased forever, along with every witnesses and their memories clouded by time. As Chris said, “at the end of the day, even if I found out who did it - he might be alive, or dead - but it doesn't bring my brother back. People say you'll get closure, but I'm never going to get closure". Dr Byles and Dr Reddington remain the Police’s primary suspects in the murder of Bernard Oliver… …and maybe, other young boys who were raped and murdered by ‘The Holy Trinity’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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