Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
how Lurgan Avenue would have looked (mostly now demolished)
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT:
This is Part Three of Three of Coldblooded. On Saturday 7th October 1944 at 2:15am, 34-year-old taxi-driver George Edward Heath drove his recently loaned grey V8 Ford Sedan east along Hammersmith Road. Forty minutes later, he would be dead. But why was George killed, for revenge, for sport, for money, or something stranger?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a blue exclamation mark (!) to the right of the words 'Chiswick Reach'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Coldblooded – Part Three. Friday 6th October 1944, roughly 3:30am. Runneymede Park by the Bell Weir Lock. 16 miles south of Hammersmith, 4 miles west of Knowles Green and just 90 minutes after the bungled taxi heist on the Kilburn High Road, the bleeding and motionless body of Violet Mae Hodge floated in the River Thames. Manually strangled and callously dumped into the dark bitter waters, this 18-year-old waitress had been lured by a wannabe gangster who was too eager to impress his excitable gun-moll in what would – effectively be - a dry run in 24-hours’ time for the callous and coldblooded murder of George Heath. Attacked in an isolated spot where no-one would hear her cries, she was targeted for the sake of her meagre possessions, and as her screams were constricted by a brute’s tightening grip, before she lost consciousness, her last memory was calling out for “Georgie”, only to hear the laugh of an evil sadist. When arrested, Georgie would claim that she was innocent, that she was just a young naïve girl forced to witness the crimes of an escaped maniac with a violent past, out of excitement and of fear. But was Ricky pressured by a desire to impress Georgie, or was she the real psychopath who goaded him to kill? Her real name was Elizabeth Maud Baker. Although no-one ever knew the real girl, as to some she was ‘Betty’, to others she was ‘Marina’, on stage she was Georgina Grayson, but to Karl she was ‘Georgie’. Georgie was born in Skewen, a small mining village near the town of Neath in South Wales on the 5th of July 1926, to Nellie, a housewife, and Arthur, a labourer. Described as a decent hardworking family who were clean and law-abiding, being showered with love and as the apple of her daddy’s eye, she should have wanted for nothing. But being immature and needy, she was a constant source of worry. As a young girl, she’d always dreamed of glamour and fame wanting to be a dancer or an actress, and loving gangster flicks so much that from an early age she started speaking in a broad New York accent. Aged 3, she uprooted with her beloved daddy to the city of Woodstock, Ontario in Canada, where he worked as a farmer, but with the Great Depression biting deep, by the age of 7 she was back in Neath. Educated at Gnoll School for Girls and Alderman Davies’ School in Neath, she frequently absconded and ran away from home three times. Not because of abuse or neglect, far from it, as with her father having enlisted in the Royal Artillery and posted to Carmarthen, she couldn’t cope when he was away. In 1935, her parents called the police when 9-year-old Georgie complained that she’d been “interfered with by a man”, and although the police investigated thoroughly, no-one was arrested, charged nor suspected. Yet in her teens, her headmistress described her as “a habitual liar who was fond of men”. As a daddy’s girl who got away with everything, in February 1940, aged just 14, she absconded from home having stolen her mother’s money. Found in Swansea, she accused a local man of having sex with her, and although Phillip Hill was charged on two counts, he was later acquitted as she was proven to be a virgin, and she admitted that the allegations against him “were without any foundation”. Three weeks later, Police found her drunk and slumped in a gutter claiming she’d been indecently assaulted. Unable to control her, she absconded again, and on the 30th of May 1940 at Neath juvenile magistrates court, she was charged under the First Schedule of the Children & Young Persons Act 1933. It wasn’t stated what crime she had committed, but it was either “a suicide attempt”, or “the assault of a child”. Removed to Northenden Road Approved School in Cheshire where unruly girls were sent instead of prison, again, her next headmistress said she was “a born liar”, and this became a hallmark of her life. To her fellow students, she claimed she’d won a scholarship, but proven to be of average intelligence, out of 300 possible marks awarded for her schoolwork, she only got a substandard score of 90. Released on licence to her home in September 1942, aged 16, her mother struggled to control her and although she claimed to be good and innocent, Neath Police stated she was “strong willed woman of very loose morals”. Therefore, marriage should have been the making of her, and although on the 25th of November 1942 she married a serving soldier named Stanley Jones at Neath Registry Office, just one day later, she cheated on him while claiming “he was a prisoner of war while fighting in Arnhem”. Elizabeth, known as ‘Betty’, alias Georgina Greyson lived a life of lies, theft and deception… …and desperate fame and glamour, in 1943, she fled to London. It defies belief, but while one a half million civilians fled the war-ravaged bomb-cratered city of London for the safety of distant Welsh towns like Neath, Georgie headed smack-bang for the danger zone. After several odd jobs as a chambermaid, a barmaid and as a waitress at Paul’s café in Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith – where she met ‘Harry’, an old War Reservist who became her friend and father figure - she claimed “I worked as a cabaret dancer and a strip tease artiste” at venues like The Panama Club in Knightsbridge and the Blue Lagoon in Carnaby Street. Only there was no evidence to prove it. Living in lodgings across the smoking ruins of West London, on 19th June 1944, two weeks after D-Day, Georgie’s mother received a telegram, in which she wrote “mummy, I’m fine and lucky to be alive”, as her lodging on Edith Road had been bombed and reduced it to a blackened shell. Like many she had survived, and she wore the bandage on her leg with pride… only this was a lie for cash and sympathy. In May 1944, Georgie was arrested for being in possession of stolen goods, which were rationed and vital as war supplies, such as chocolate, eggs, flour and milk, as well as 300 cigarettes, two haversacks and a large reel of parachute silk, which she planned to make into several dresses, so she’d look pretty. Having flirted with American GIs and coerced them into bringing her some illegal treats in return for a little love and some special attention, as a first offence, all she received was a written warning. A war was raging, children were starving, and as millions were dying in their beds or being slaughtered on the beaches - without an ounce of compassion in her bones - she cared for no-one but herself. It was all about her – her clothes, her money, her drink, her sex, her good times and her endless fun. On Friday 22nd of September 1944, Georgie moved into a small second-floor front-room at 311 King Street, owned by Mrs Edris Evans. At first, her landlady liked her, she found her charming, sweet and naive. But quickly realising that this was all just a façade, soon enough, she saw that the real Georgie was a ruthless liar who could manipulate men into doing anything for her, to keep her happy and keen. Eleven days later, she met a Private Karl Hulten alias ‘Ricky Allen’, a man of danger and death… …but having fallen for his lies, she believed he was the answer to her dreams. Friday 6th October 1944, roughly 2:40am, driving south from Cricklewood. Ricky Allen drove the 6-wheeled 2 ½ tonne US Army truck down the isolated Edgware Road. The cab was gripped in a stoney silence as, again, he had failed Georgie. After a cowardly attack on a girl on a bike, a pub robbery he’d stopped before it even began, and now the bungled heist of a taxi in Kilburn, he needed to impress Georgie, but all he looked was foolish, like a little boy playing at being a gangster. Ricky claimed “I was driving along Edgware Road when Georgie said ‘there’s a girl, stop’”. According to Ricky, it was Georgie’s decision to pick-up a girl, to attack her and to dump her. Her name was Violet Mae Hodge, an 18-year-old waitress from Filwood Park in Bristol, who was making her way home. “I stopped the truck, and she asked the girl where she was going, she said Paddington to catch a train to Bristol. I told her I was going to Reading and that I would take her there”. Keen to save money, it made sense to Violet, as who wouldn’t trust a serviceman and his girlfriend sitting in a US Army truck. Throwing her suitcase in the back, it must have been a thrill for this young girl to ride in an Army truck and to meet a real 2nd Lieutenant, as feeling safe, she chatted to the Welsh girl who was the same age. “We rode out of London alongside the river”, taking a familiar route through Hammersmith, Chiswick and following the Thames through Brentford, Teddington, Shepperton, Egham, Staines-upon-Thames, and cutting through Runneymede Park towards Reading, not far from the ditch in Knowles Green. Just beside the Bell Weir Lock, Ricky stopped the truck, claiming “we’ve got a flat tyre”. It was dark, quiet and isolated, with no houses in sight and no people to be seen. Ricky told them both to get out, so as he searched for the tools, he could jack-up the truck, a job nearly impossible for one man to do. “I told Georgie to get the girl’s back to me”, Ricky said “she said ‘all right’”. Georgie gave her a cigarette and lit one for herself” as if they were just two girls passing time and nattering. But somehow Violet knew something was wrong, whether it was their furtive glances, the tyres, or having overheard Ricky. Whispering to Ricky, “I think she’s wise to it”, so to distract her, Georgie got back in the truck to get some blocks”, and as she did so, Ricky later confessed, “I hit the girl over the head with an iron bar” – it was a one-kilo tyre-iron, heavier than a brick and harder than a human skull, as a fast whack on the back of the girl’s head caused her to stumble, to stagger and blood to trickle, but oddly, she didn’t fall. Violet screamed “Georgie”, her eyes wide with terror, “Georgie, don’t let him do it”, as the tyre iron came down once again on her bleeding head, as she pleaded “stop him, make him stop”. Only she didn’t, she just watched. And as the young girl remained upright, her pale face now soaked with a river of red, as Ricky seized her throat and his hands began strangling her, at her tears, Georgie just laughed. Ricky confessed “she fell. I knelt on her arm with my left leg, my right leg in her back and her neck in a headlock. The girl was waving her right arm”, panicked and terrified, “Georgie knelt on it”, and as the young girl was overpowered and lay bleeding and gasping for air, “she went through her pockets”. Georgie later stated “the girl made a gurgling noise and I saw blood coming from her mouth. She was struggling as Ricky tightened his grip. I held her legs for about ten minutes, before she became limp”. “By this time the girl had ceased struggling”, Ricky said, “I picked up her shoulders and Georgie her feet. We carried her over to the river and dumped her three feet from the edge”, tossed like litter. Floating in the water lay the bleeding and motionless body of Violet Hodge. Face down in the cold bitter waters, as her attackers drove away, laughing like jackals, they tossed her treasured photos and letters from loved ones into the road, proud of their score of two coats, some slacks and 6 shillings. With the tyre wrench hurled into the water, the only evidence of their cowardly attack on a terrified young girl was the blood spattered down his US Army trousers. which belonged to someone else. Georgie later confessed “I thought the girl was dead”… …only she wasn’t. Bleeding and unconscious, although her body was partially submerged on the bankside, with the low tide going out rather than in, she didn’t drift, she just lay there, her head in the mud, slowly breathing. Coming to, a shivering and sodden Violet would state “I reached an overhanging branch of a tree and dragged myself out of the water. I saw that the lorry had gone, so I made my way to a cottage”. Helped by good people, she was taken to Windsor emergency hospital, suffering a head wound and a ruptured left eye, but in time – physically - she could make a good recovery and would become a vital witness. Friday 6th October, the day of George Heath’s murder. As callous coldblooded killers do, “we stayed in bed until 3pm” having savoured a good night’s sleep. With the victim’s suitcase in Georgie’s wardrobe, spotting his victim’s blood on his trousers, Ricky said “I gave Georgie the ticket for a B4 bag stashed at Hammersmith tube station”. With a fresh uniform in the name of Werner J Meier, that night, they would kill lone a cab driver, and dump his body in a ditch. And having promised Ricky that, “she’d sponge the blood out of them and send it to the cleaners”, it was actually Ricky who she’d planned to send to the cleaners… as she knew he was cheating on her. Monday 9th October 1944, three days after George Heath’s murder, when the police were hunting for his killers and a grey Ford V8 saloon registration plate RD8955, with a missing handbrake return spring and the wheels exactly 4 feet and 10 inches apart. Ricky had hidden it in the old Gaumont cinema car park, but – with the cold shoulder and stoney silence between both killers having returned – he drove the car around to 159 Fulham Palace Road, to impress his new girlfriend, 16-year-old Joyce Alma Cook. All it took to crack the case was a lone constable with a keen eye walking his beat in Lurgan Avenue. At 8:10pm, spotting the car, he called it in, they blocked the street, several detective lay in wait, and as Ricky exited his girlfriend’s house fifty minutes later, they rushed him before he could flee. Pulling him out of the driver’s seat, although he had wiped away any prints or blood, they found the 45 calibre Colt Remington pistol in his hip pocket and six bullets exactly matching those used to kill George Heath. Having been arrested, Karl Hulten, alias Ricky Allen was transferred to Hammersmith Police Station. As expected, as a habitual liar and a thief who had been AWOL for ten weeks – who had stolen a gun, two uniforms and a 2 ½ tonne truck to commit a spree of theft, assault, attempted murder and murder - his statement to 1st Lieutenant Robert De Mott of the US Army military police was a sack of lies. Of the gun, he said “it’s mine, I always carry it, I used it last week to shoot at rabbits, but I missed”. Of the truck, he denied everything, stating “I don’t know nothing about it. I found it in a car park”. Of the car, George’s car, he said “I found it yesterday in a woods near my base”, which may have been feasible, as there were no eyewitnesses who had seen him driving it on the day of George’s murder. And as for the murder itself, he denied being near Chiswick, Hammersmith or Knowles Green, stating “I slept at the Ecclestone Hotel … every night except on Tuesday and Saturday”, which couldn’t be verified, “and I spent the night with a ‘Piccadilly Commando’” - this being Army slang for a prostitute. So far, he hadn’t mentioned Georgie once, having thought he could wheedle his way through this with his lies and proving his manliness by outsmarting the police. Only, when asked where he slept on the Tuesday and Saturday, not being best blessed with brains, he said “my girlfriend’s, Georgina Grayson”. Driven by the police to her second-floor lodging at 311 King Street in Hammersmith, they arrested Georgie - who was not best pleased at her so-called boyfriend’s betrayal - and found Violet’s clothing, her suitcase, and the bloodied trousers she said she’d “sponge and take to the cleaners” but didn’t. In her first statement, Georgie couldn’t help but lie to save her own skin, and as a selfish little girl who only thought of herself – seeing her aliases, her fake job as a dancer, her history of accusing innocent men of assaulting her, and even the bandage on her leg from a bombing she hadn’t been involved in – the police knew that every word which came out of her mouth was a very distant cousin of the truth. Blaming Ricky for their crimes, and stating “when I said I wanted to do something dangerous, I meant to go over Germany in a bomber, but he got me wrong”, although she would admit a minor part in his spree, with only circumstantial evidence against her, the detectives had no choice but to let her go. The investigation would stall without a confession. They had the car, but with no fingerprints or blood. They had the gun, but again, it was clean. Assuring those good people who had bought George’s possessions off Ricky – like the cigarette case, the lighter, the watch with the luminous figures, the fountain pen and the silver pencil – that they would not be arrested for possession as murder was a much more serious offence, they all came forward. And they also had 18-year-old Violet Mae Hodge, who had seen her attacker’s faces and heard their names. But still, they needed a confession… so, with Ricky as knowing full-well that Georgie’s words could convict him and that if she blamed him for everything that he would hang – he opened up. In his second statement, Ricky confessed; “I’ve never broken into any pubs or shops in Hammersmith or elsewhere. I told Georgie that I had been running around with the mob in Chicago. This was not true. It was just a build up for me”. It was just all a lie to impress a girl, and the evidence proved it. As for the murder of George Heath, “when the car stopped, I was holding my loaded and cocked pistol in front of my chest. I looked over to Georgie” - quite why, we don’t know – “I intended to fire through the car, to scare the driver, that’s all. But just as I pulled the trigger, he reached over the back seat to open the left rear door for Georgie. When I fired, I knew that I had hit him, as I heard him groan ‘no’”. In his own words, it was an accident, a mistake by a nervous boy, who was desperate to impress a girl. What he needed now was for Georgie’s story to back him up, as – based on her evidence – if convicted, the best he’d get would be a life sentence for manslaughter, and not a death sentence for murder… …and yet, the life of a coldblooded killer hung on the testimony of another. That day, while walking free in Hammersmith, it’s ironic that Georgie paid a visit to New Pin Cleaners in King Street, where she had promised Ricky she would take his bloodstained trousers… but didn’t. Inside, bumping into ‘Harry’ Kimberly, an old War Reservist who became her friend and a father figure during her time as a waitress at Paul’s café, when she told him her story and asked for his thoughts, he sagely said “the best thing to do would be to go back to the police station and tell the truth”. Returning to Hammersmith police station, Georgie made a second statement, and although it began with the words, “I wish to tell you the whole truth about my association with Ricky Allen and what happened”, whereas she would blame him stating “I lied because Ricky had threatened me”, he counteracted by blaming her, claiming “if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have shot Heath’”. (End) Charged with the armed robbery of John Strangeway, the intent to murder Violet Mae Hodge, and the murder of taxi-driver George Edward Heath, their trial began at the Old Bailey on 9th January 1945. Across the six-day trial, both Karl Hulten alias Ricky Allen, and Elizabeth Jones alias Georgina Greyson spoke in the witness box for hours of their innocence and blamed the other. With Georgie professing that she was just an innocent girl dragged along for the ride, and Ricky claiming it was all her idea saying “she made some remark about robbing a cab. I argued against it, she kept arguing with me”. But with overwhelming evidence of their guilt stacked against them, on 15th of January 1945, 22-year-old Karl Gustav Hulten and 18-year-old Elizabeth Maud Jones were found guilty of wilful murder. With the only permissible sentence given the gravity of their crimes being death, they both awaited the hang man’s noose, but with the jury – for whatever reason – requesting a recommendation of mercy for her, although they had both failed at appeal, The Secretary of State stepped in and reprieved her. On 8th March 1945, at Pentonville Prison, Karl Hulten was executed by hanging, becoming the first US soldier to be executed on British soil. Back in Boston, although his wife Rita and daughter were given a chance to say goodbye to him, with the transatlantic telephone line having failed, they never spoke. Reprieved two days before her execution, Elizabeth Jones served nine years of her life sentence. Released from prison in 1954, she later married, had children, and as far as we know, remained good. But what was the truth, which was the lie, and who was the coldblooded psychopath? 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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Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
between the Chiswick roundabout and Great West Road where George Heath was shot
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN:
This is Part Two of Three of Coldblooded. On Saturday 7th October 1944 at 2:15am, 34-year-old taxi-driver George Edward Heath drove his recently loaned grey V8 Ford Sedan east along Hammersmith Road. Forty minutes later, he would be dead. But why was George killed, for revenge, for sport, for money, or something stranger?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a blue exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Gunnersbury'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Coldblooded - Part Two. Robert Balding was an auxiliary fireman at Knowles Green fire station, just outside the town of Staines and sixteen and a half miles south-west of Chiswick. Far from the fiery brunt of the Luftwaffe’s blitz, this little village sometimes got a crashed fighter, a downed bomber or a lost V1 rocket exploding in their fields, but mostly they saw car crashes, stuck cats and chip-pan fires, and very rarely a murder. Having finished a 48-hour shift, on Saturday 7th October at 9:10am, Robert took a shortcut and strolled down a dirt road at the rear of Stainash Crescent. With the wind blowing a gale and the ground boggy and wet, he was too tired to realise what he was seeing when his eyes spied a bundle of rags in a ditch. “The ditch was wide and shallow” he recalled, “I saw that it was a man who I thought was sleeping”, only who would sleep face down in the mud on a cold night like this? “I went to him. It struck me that with his feet higher than his head, that he must be ill. I shook his shoulder”, only he did not move, groan and he did not murmur. And with his dark blue overcoat pulled right up over his eyes and head, “as I lifted the lapel, I saw from the colour of his face, which was blue and grey, that he was dead”. Robert called the police, and with the body being a somebody who was loved, the people who missed him were already worried. Having failed to pick her up at 8am as planned, his girlfriend Violet called his pal Arthur Green at Godfrey Davis who hadn’t seen him since 11:05pm and reported him missing. And with Harry Hawkins, the owner of the Ford V8 expecting him back at 9am, knowing him to be honest and punctual, he gave the police the car’s description, the licence plate and the driver’s name. Only, the missing man, the stolen car and the dumped body were yet to be connected. Divisional Detective Inspector Tansell arrived at 9:45am. The ditch was an odd spot to dump a body, as being 440 yards from the road, this 11-foot wide 3-foot-deep ditch was 22-feet from the dirt track, so it wasn’t not the kind of place you could stumble upon. With the corpse in a state of rigor mortis, having been dead between four to ten hours, there were no signs of violence, struggle or defensive wounds. Lying face down, with his limbs crossed and his once-neat clothes all muddy and rucked-up, it was clear that someone had dragged him to the ditch. And with his jacket unbuttoned, as a very possible robbery, anything of value had been stolen with his killer leaving all of the crap; two hankies, a broken comb, a latchkey, five cigarettes, a cinema ticket, a pocketknife, a rubber and a phial of three pills - which also meant that the Police couldn’t identify him. They had no idea who he was, why he was killed, or who by… but they knew that he hadn’t died there. An autopsy confirmed that the body was dumped within two hours of his death, and that a single .45 calibre bullet had nicked the underside of his rear 6th rib, exited via the 3rd front rib, and perforated both lobes of his right lung and his spinal cord, leaving him paralysed and drowning in his own blood. With blood on his palm matching the exit wound to his chest, Robert Churchill, a gun expert for the Met’ Police confirmed that although no scorching was found on his back, the shot was fired at a close range, as with the exit wound being keyhole shaped, this indicated that the bullet had turned sideways meaning “it had been fired from a minimum of nine inches”, and with a concentrated pattern of blood spatter on both of his legs, this suggested that the victim was “in a seated position when he was shot”. So, was this a carjacking, a robbery gone wrong, or an execution? The killer had been careful to leave nothing behind, with no ID, no blood, no prints and no bullets. And yet, the car itself could not say the same. On the dirt road, DDI Tansell spotted two parallel tyre marks – exactly 4 feet and 10 inches apart – veering in a sharp handed curve off the road and onto the grass by the ditch, with the tread leaving distinct grooves and small tufts of grass cut away and oil soaked. During house-to-house enquiries, Reginald Turney of 68 Stainash Crescent stated “I was awoken at 3am or thereabouts by the sound of a car’s engine revving hard as if it was driving on bumpy ground”. He only heard these sounds, but by the ditch, between the tyres grooves and the cut grass bumps, the detective found the handbrake return spring from an almost new motor car, which Ralph Blackburn, a specialist at the Ford Motor Company in Dagenham would confirm “belonged to a Ford V8 saloon”. At the crime scene, the killer had been cautious not to leave any clues, and yet, through coldblooded arrogance, he had tossed his victim’s possessions out of the car’s back window, which led a kind boy doing a good deed for a total stranger to stumble upon vital evidence before the body was even found. At 8am, John Anthony Jones, an electrician’s apprentice was passing the Great West Road near Cains Lane when he spotted a brown leather wallet on the grass verge. Handing it to the police, inside was the driving licence, cheque book and ID of 34-year-old George Edward Heath; a man who had been recently reported missing, in a possible stolen car, whose description matched the body in the ditch. Identified by his wife Winifred, with the police having circulated the details of a grey Ford V8 saloon registration plate RD8955, within 36 hours they had identified the man, the car, and a possible motive. What they needed was to find this coldblooded killer… …before he killed again. Second Lieutenant Richard Allen of the 101st Airbourne in the US Army was the name he gave. Based in Reading, he went by the nickname of ‘Ricky’… only this wasn’t ‘Ricky’ and the uniform was stolen. As a thick-set brute like an archetypal gangster, with dark swept back hair like a Mafia hitman and cold dead eyes like he was devoid of any emotion, 22-year-old Private Karl Gustav Hulten wanted to be someone. He wanted to be big, feared, respected, and he didn’t care who he had to step on to get it. Born to Swedish parents in Stockholm on 3rd of March 1922, they entered America in 1923 when he was one year old, but with his father being “a man with a notoriously violent temper” who beat him black and blue, although he could have had his mother’s kindness, instead he mirrored this monster. Educated at the Farm and Trade School in Boston, Karl was not best blessed with brains being a sturdy man of brawn with slow-wits and quick fists, and although as a married man with a daughter he had tried to hold down a job – as a clerk, a mechanic, a lorry driver and a skating instructor – being a moody short-fused brute, he resented authority, especially when he was inducted into the US Army in 1943. Shipped to the UK in January 1944, as a truck driver for the 501st Infantry, although none of the soldiers knew it, he was due to take part in the bloody invasion of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord on 6th of June 1944, but burdened by a fiery temper, a bad attitude and a criminal bent, he never did. As a selfish arrogant man who was unfaithful to his wife and his girlfriend, in the weeks following the invasion when his comrades were giving their lives and soaking foreign shores with their blood, this sticky-fingered thief, brutal lump and gutless traitor only ever thought about himself and his needs. On the 14th of July 1944, Private Karl Hulten absconded from his barracks, and going AWOL for almost a month, he was arrested, fined $20 and imprisoned for 20 days for carrying a concealed weapon. One day before his court martial, he again went AWOL, only with no intention to return, he went on a spree of thievery; he stole the uniform of 2nd Lieutenant Richard Allen, another off Private Werner J Meier which he stashed in a US Army B4 bag in the cloakroom at the Hammersmith tube station, he also stole a 6-wheeled 2 ½ tonne US Army truck from the 101st Airbourne, as well as a Colt Remington automatic pistol stolen from Staff Sergeant Sherman, loaded with seven rounds of .45 calibre bullets – a gun he would use to kill in cold blood a cabbie he hadn’t met until 15 minutes before his murder. Hiding in plain sight among the bustling shopping district of Hammersmith, West London, ‘Ricky’ as he professed to be, lived the life of a common criminal pretending to be a hero, but all the while he stole from blitz-weary civilians and hawked off their possessions on the black market to fund an easy life of drinking, gambling and womanising, as this cold cruel killer didn’t care about who he hurt, or why. Karl Hulten dreamed of being a gangster… …but what he wanted most was a girl who’d adore him. Tuesday 3rd October, Paul’s café, 1 Queen Caroline Street in Hammersmith; a greasy-spoon which was thick with cigarette flumes, heart-clogging fry-ups and the steam of a bubbling tea urn. Among a sea of soldiers, civvies and cabbies, Len Bexley sat chatting to his daughter’s friend, when Karl came in. “Ricky Allen meet Georgina Grayson”, Len said, introducing the sour-faced hulking brute to the slim, sweet-faced 18-year-old, with brown curled hair, pale skin and red lips. Quickly smitten, like him, she couldn’t let on that her name was an alias, and although his was to avoid arrest, hers was to mask the shame that this part-time dancer and wannabe actress was actually just plain old Elizabeth Jones known as ‘Betty’, an out-of-work waitress from the mining town of Neath in South Wales. Fresh to the big city, sweet little ‘Georgie’ sought a life of excitement, and here, she found ‘Ricky’. Ricky was unlike any man she had met; a bad boy without a care in the world, and a dark and brooding menace who did whatever he liked, and as they chatted, he coolly told her of his crimes; “Ricky told me of several jobs he had done”, she said, “he’d broken into The Hope and got £50. Wednesday last, he did a jewellers and a gown shop in King Street, a café in Shepherd Bush, a greengrocers and a pawnshop. He’d broken into several pubs in Reading, and he had shot an American soldier, I think he said he’d drowned him. He also said he’d killed a man and a woman with a gun in the West End”. Staring into his soulless eyes, as this callous killer spoke so casually about murder, given that the worst thing she’d ever done was to run away from home, she should have fled, but she didn’t. Her heart was racing, her eyes were wide, and her mouth was dry, but the brute didn’t frighten her, he excited her. At 10:30pm, he picked her up in a 6-wheeled 2 ½ tonne US Army truck which he bragged “I stole from Reading a few days ago”. Being hot, the truck were probably being hunted, and although her instincts should have been to “get out”, “run”, “don’t look back”, as an immature little girl who was raised on a diet of American gangster movies, and not reality, she was drawn to his thrills and his danger. In truth, he could have been a bullshitter, but in the truck, he pulled out a loaded pistol – the gun he’d use to kill a lone cabbie in cold blood - and although she’d state “he said he’d killed several people in Chicago with a gun”, again she didn’t scream or flee, instead she shared a dream which would seal her fate – “I’d love to do something exciting”, she said, “something dangerous, like being a gun moil”. And there the deal was done. ‘Ricky’ would get his girl, and ‘Georgie’ would get her gangster. That night, they drove, heading west and prowling the unlit country lanes on the outskirts of Reading. Having driven through the town and found nothing of interest, Georgie said “we started back towards London about 2am, I think. When we got on the road back, near Maidenhead on the London to Bath Road, we passed a girl”. She was a lone lady, on a bicycle, heading home, after a long shift at work. “We drove on for about five minutes and pulled up at the side of the road”, it was dark, isolated, with hedgerows on either side, and the only light to be seen was the faint light of her bicycle’s headlamp. “He got out and waited for the girl to come along”. Looking like a parked-up truck with no-one inside, the girl would have seen nothing and sensed no danger as she passed by. But as the brute sprang from the shadows, “as the girl came alongside, I saw him push her, she fell and screamed ‘don’t touch me’”. Cut, bruised and shaken, as she stumbled to her feet, with Ricky picking up her purse as one of the prizes he would wantonly take, gripped by fear, the girl didn’t need to think twice and she fled for her life. And as she ran down the middle of a dark country lane as fast as her legs could carry her – having been taught how to drive a truck by Ricky – he barked “get after her”, as Georgie floored the engine. Behind the girl, the engine revved, and with its dim yellow lights illuminating her panicked frame as it darted back-and-forth like a frightened rabbit, with the girl having nowhere to run, all she would have heard was the truck getting ever nearer, closer, never knowing what her fate might be; maybe crushed under the wheels, maybe kidnapped and held for ransom, or maybe raped, tortured and murdered. From the passenger’s seat, Ricky spotted her, saying “she’s there, she’s there”, as his torch shined on the whites of a petrified eyes as she crouched in the shrubbery. But being in the garden of a cottage, as the blackout blinds moved and a light shined upon her, the truck sped on, and the girl was safe. It was a lucky escape for her, but only just. Back at Hammersmith, “we parked the truck in the old Gaumont cinema car park in Sussex Place and went back to my room and Ricky stayed the night”. Excited by the thrill of the chase, they had sex. But the contents of the young girl’s handbag wasn’t much of a score for this gangster and his gun-moll, having nicked “a book, six shillings, some clothing coupons, a flannel, some soap and a sanitary towel”. The next morning, Georgie introduced her landlady, Mrs Edris, to her new boyfriend, but being a good judge of character, she said “I thought there was something fishy about him. Georgie said she was going to meet him again at midnight. I told her she must be mad, that she was asking for trouble, and she was likely to have her throat slit”. But Georgie said nothing, as by then, she was smitten. Georgie was the girl of a gangster, but having failed to live up to his reputation as a killer, the attack on the young girl in a dark lane riding a bicycle came across not as callous and cruel, but as cowardly. That night Ricky would make it up to her… …and a lone cabbie would be in his sights. Thursday 5th October, late afternoon, having sold off the girl’s clothing coupons for £1, the twosome went to the cinema, and as they departed the Gaumont at roughly 10pm, “Ricky said ‘we’ll go and do another job’. I understood he meant to go and steal some money from someone”, Georgie said. Brazenly returning to Reading in the stolen truck, a little after midnight, they pulled up at The White Hart pub which he had spied the night before. With the pub closed but the staff cashing up, it was the perfect hit; a quick rush of adrenaline and a big score as he hightailed it out with the night’s takings. For Ricky the gangster, the professional thief and the ruthless killer, this heist was surely chickenfeed, and the kind of crime which would make him worthy in his girlfriend’s eyes. Only as he sat in the truck, nervously shifting in his seat, his teeth gritted, the gun in his sweaty hand and geeing himself up for an armed robbery, as Georgie excitedly watched on, he suddenly had a change of heart and drove off. “Where are you going” Georgie snapped, “why are we driving away?”, Ricky was certain that the caper was too dangerous, “I saw them, we were being watched” he said. Only Georgie hadn’t seen anyone. The drive back to London was the longest they had endured, the silence was painful, and with Georgie getting fed-up with this little ‘big man’ who was all mouth and no trousers, her love for him had waned. The thrill was gone, her man was weak, and Georgie was looking elsewhere. It was as they approached Marble Arch that, Ricky said Georgie had an idea; “as we got there, she suggested that we rob a cab”… …and after so many failures, keen to impress her, the killer of George Heath went hunting. For a short while, they prowled the West End in the truck hunting for a lone cab. “We saw one just off Park Lane”, Georgie would state, “Ricky said ‘I’m going to follow it and take his money’”, and with a 6-wheeled 2 ½ tonne US Army truck being a familiar sight in wartime Britain, they didn’t stand out, as they tailed the loan cabbie 4.2 miles north-west, up the Edgware Road, all the way to Cricklewood. Ricky stated “the cab stopped for ten minutes. I parked the truck about half a block behind. The cab then turned around and I followed it”. Tailing this dark Ford saloon as it headed west, it didn’t matter who the driver was, all that mattered was how much money he had, and how impressed Georgie was. Keeping his distance, Ricky held back until he found a lonely spot on Kilburn High Road, where there were no cars nor houses, passersby nor policeman. And with the gun in his hand, it was now or never. As the truck roared passed, from the left-hand driver’s side window, with the cab in the blackout, all he could make out was a lone driver smoking a cigarette, unaware of what was about to happen to him. And with the time being 2:10am, it was then that Ricky struck. “I passed the cab and turned in front of it, forcing it to stop”, Ricky said. With her eyes wide, Georgie watched excitedly – a gangster movie playing out in front of her – as Ricky jumped down, stuck his gun in the window, and with the muzzle in the driver’s face, demanded “I want your money, all of it”. The cabbie, 56-year-old John Strangeway whimpered with fear “I don’t have any money, I’ve just come out”, which was the truth as his cashbox was bare. And as he reached in to check, it was then that Private Karl Hulten - who was driving a stolen Army truck, holding a stolen Army issue gun, wearing a stolen US officer’s uniform and using the alias of 2nd Lieutenant Richard Allen - got the shock of his life. In the dark of the backseat was sat a passenger, dressed in a US Army Air Force officer’s uniform, Ricky was face-to-face with Lieutenant George McMillan Reeves, who had seen his face, had witnessed the robbery, and – more importantly – had heard his very identifiable accent, a mix of Swedish and Boston. Fleeing as fast as he could, back in Hammersmith, he hid the truck in the Gaumont cinema car park, Ricky & Georgie hid out in her room, and following another failed robbery, Ricky was treated to a cold shoulder and a lengthy silence, as her so-called gangster had failed, again. Somewhere else that night, George Heath was going about his business, driving his cab and making money to feed his family. He was safe and unaware, but 24 hours later –chosen at random – this cabbie would be dead. (end) Karl Hulten, alias Ricky Allen was positively identified at Willesden Green Police Station, by the cabbie John Strangeway and his passenger, the US Army Lieutenant. Having gone AWOL from Reading, with no known civilian criminal record in Britain, the hard part would be to find Ricky; as he didn’t have a home, he didn’t family here, and - seen as a “bit of a loser” - he was a habitual liar and a fantasist. Ricky claimed to be a gangster, who according to Georgie had broken into many pubs, jewellers, cafes, greengrocers and pawnbrokers, “he had shot an American soldier, he’d killed a man and a woman in the West End” and “he’d killed several people in Chicago with a gun” as he said he had run with a mob. But there was no proof of this. Not a single shred. And although he had stolen uniforms, a gun and a truck, he wasn’t a crazed gangster on a killing spree, he was just a boy with a hatred of authority, who was rebelling against his conscription, and – although cold-hearted – what he wanted to find was love. Having failed as a clerk, a mechanic, a driver, a skating instructor, a husband, a father and a soldier, Karl Hulten liked being ‘Ricky Allen’ as much as he enjoyed pretending to be a gangster to impress a girl, as the truth of who he was wasn’t all that exciting. Karl was a nobody, and he knew it. And even the killing for which he would be executed wasn’t a coldblooded murder, but as he said, “an accident”. What we’ve heard so far were Georgie’s words, her version, recorded when she was arrested for her part in a murder. Georgie claimed she was an innocent; an excited little girl lead into danger by the thrill of a wannabe gangster with a big gob and no brains. But who was the coldblooded psychopath? Was he pressured by a desire to impress his girl, or was she the true psychopath who goaded him? Part three of three of Coldblooded concludes next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE:
On Wednesday 24th of May 1871, a wealthy bachelor called Frederick Moon came 23 Newton Road in Bayswater, the lavish home of his girlfriend Hannah Newington for dinner. They ate fine food, they drank good wine, they listened to music on the piano, and then – for reasons that no-one could fathom – he ended up dead. But who had killed him? His girlfriend, her lover, their guests, himself, or was it fate?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a yellow exclamation mark (!) above the words 'The Long Water' in Hyde Park. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Newton-Road in Bayswater, W2; four roads west of the lovesick assailant of Barbara Shuttleworth, two roads north of the ‘old lady killer’, three roads east of the petty revenge of Dominic Kelly, and a short walk from the bones of the spoiled child - coming soon to Murder Mile. Newton Road is a quiet residential street dotted with a wealth of luxurious homes from the 1800s. All pristine white and sparklingly bright, there’s no litter, no dog plop, no kids, no noise, and no dickheads soiling the street with the soulless thump of braindead beats, all because they want a bit of attention. Here you can expect their version of Deliveroo called ‘I’m famished, what-what?’ to airlift a platter of oysters and a bottle of Bolli, the road sweeper to wear slippers to keep his noise down, and the nanny to silence the brat with the speed of a ninja should the posh sprog interrupt mummy’s mid-afternoon snooze having had a “frightfully busy day perusing the pashminas at Laura Ashley, don’t you know”. 23 Newton-Road looks as it did in the 1870s, being a semi-detached two-storey townhouse with white stucco walls, steps up to the ground floor, and a basement which was the scullery and maid’ quarters. On Wednesday 24th of May 1871, a wealthy bachelor called Frederick Moon came here to the lavish home of his girlfriend Hannah Newington for dinner. They ate fine food, they drank good wine, they listened to music on the piano, and then – for reasons that no-one could fathom – he ended up dead. But who had killed him? His girlfriend, her lover, their guests, himself, or was it fate? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 235: The Accident, Suicide or Murder of Freddy Moon. Most deaths are easily explainable; a heart attack, a car accident, chocking on food or falling off a wall. It should all be as self-explanatory as finding a corpse with a knife in his chest. But with Freddy being dead, his girlfriend inconsolable, and the guests and servants having seen nothing? This case was not. The victim’s name was Frederick Graves Moon, and he was born in 1829. Raised in pomp and privilege, as the younger son to Sir Francis Graham Moon, 1st Baronet, Alderman and the former Lord Mayor of London, he lived a lavish life of extreme wealth, with high expectations that he would match his father’s prestige, titles and vast success. His older brother was a Sir and a 2nd Baronet to boot, but being described as “a kind, liberal hearted fellow”, Freddy lacked their bite. By 1871, 41-year-old Freddy had become part owner of Moon, Cock & Co Brewery in Leicester, one of the premier beer and porter manufacturers in Britain, serving millions of gallons of giddy-making grog to pubs all over the country, and raking in a whopping £3000 a year, roughly £3.3 million today. Given his financial success, his father should have been proud. But Freddy wasn’t a business brain or a leader of men, as all he did was to invest his family’s money, and to let his partners do the hard work. Those who knew Freddy said, “he loved the idle life being a man of easy amusements” with which he could fritter away his free time, engage in frivolity, and squander his profits on a bachelor’s pleasures. As a huge fan of horse racing, Freddy was well-accustomed to blowing a wad at the racetrack having got wind that a gee-gee called The Filly’s Fancy was a dead-cert, only to lose a small fortune on a nag destined for the glue factory. He liked wine wines and rich foods, which burdened his stout and rotund frame with bouts of gout, attacks of bilious and the odd burp of rich man’s wind having over-indulged. But most of all, he loved beautiful women, and although he was often seen strutting in Mayfair with a rather sparkling little lady perched upon his arm like a budgie pecking for seeds, he never married. He loved to be loved, and he always had love in his heart. But in his heart, he was always a bachelor. And although, the love of a good woman was never far from his mind… …what made his life more difficult was his love of unattainable women. Hannah Newington went by many names and aliases, such as Flora Newington, Flora Canning, Frances S Canning and Madame de Morne which suggested a loftier upbringing as a woman who married well. In truth, she was born as humble old Hannah Fowler, a girl who came from nothing and was destined to live a life of drudgery with too many kids on a small wage, a drunken lout as a wayward husband, and the twilight years of her early forties, spent alone and picking oakum as a workhouse inmate. But unlike so many for whom that was their life, on her side, she had her looks and she used them wisely. In 1856, aged 22, Hannah married a wealthy and successful solicitor called William Newington, but they were not happy, not by a long stretch. And with him being described as “a solicitor of good standing”, with him fleeing for unknown reasons to the distant shores of Australia after just three years, he would be gone, and she would be branded with the scandalous title of “an abandoned wife”. And without his permission to divorce, she could never remarry, making any relationship sinful. As a single woman with no career and a daughter to support, Hannah did what she could to survive in an era where a woman had less rights than cattle, and an unmarried divorcee was akin to the devil. Little is known about her criminal history, but it was said that Hannah was a professional con woman who used her beauty to lure in some of London’s wealthiest men, who lived the high life in the city’s most opulent hotels, and who dined off their fortunes by pretending to be their wife. Leaving a trail of debt across Mayfair having “left without paying” and “obtaining goods by misrepresentation”, in 1867 she was convicted of fraud, having left six creditors owing £2300 (just over £2.4 million today). After a short stint in prison, as some of her suitors had taken pity on her, in 1871, Hannah became the paramour of Captain Davy, a retired Army officer described as “strange with a big black beard”. Quite what their relationship was is uncertain; to some, she was his girlfriend; to society, she was little more than a concubine or a high-class prostitute; but to her, although they never married, she went by the title of Mrs Davey, as when the so-called wife of an Army officer says she’s his wife, who would check? That year, either as a symbol of his love, or as a place where he could keep her, Captain Davey rented her a three-floored townhouse at 23 Newton-Road in the fashionable suburb of Bayswater. He paid her rent, he purchased her food, he gave her a generous allowance, and all she had to do was be there. It’s uncertain whether she loved Captain Davey, but unable to remarry and with her beauty fading, this once-young attractive girl who was tall and elegant had morphed into a man-sized and slightly stout 38-year-old woman of “questionable morals and character” for whom time was running out. Depressed at her fading looks and ebbing charm, she drank to quell her fears, she ate to comfort her loneliness, and as a nervous and unpredictable woman with a severe alcohol problem, her doctor had advised her to “dry out” by going to a German resort, but instead, she stayed home and drank more. Hannah was a drunk, Freddy was depressed, and together that mix would be lethal. In his final year alive, Freddy was plagued by a wealth of stresses. As a 41-year-old man, his father had pestered him to marry as most of his siblings had, but Freddy had no-one but Hannah; an abandoned wife, a suspected prostitute and a career criminal who was woefully unsuitable for a baronet’s son. 18 months prior, his beloved mother Anne had died, and his grief had left him in an emotional funk. In the months prior, his relationship with Hannah had become more fractious, with her shouting “I am your wife, Freddy”, only for him to retort, “no you are not, and you will never be as long as I live”. And although Freddy’s friend, Captain Bowes Elliot had suggested that Freddy use his wealth to get rid of her - spoken more out of drunken spite than genuine hatred - over a lunch Hannah was heard to spit “by heavens, I’ll have your life”, and at a dinner she supposedly said, “by Jove, I’ll stab you some day!”. Their quarrels – usually over an overabundance of port – were short-lived and predominantly verbal, they always apologised, and Freddy made up for his mood by gifting Hannah with a tidy sum of £200. Wednesday 24th of May 1871 was Freddy’s last day alive. Being supposedly sunk in the depths of depression, some have suggested this was down to his losses at Derby Day, and although he was described as “very gloomy”, he only lost £10 (£1400 today), whereas at the time of his death, he still had £1300 in his bank (the equivalent of £1.8 million). It could have been that Hannah had failed to keep a lunch date with him, although she had stood him up many times before, but there was also a much weightier problem which was bearing down up his brain. In May 1871, the British Government had proposed the introduction of the 1872 Licensing Bill. Having largely been unregulated, Parliament were shaping new laws on alcohol. Soon, it would be an offence to be drunk in public, to be drunk in charge of a horse, or to be drunk in possession of a loaded firearm, all of which affected the people, but there were new laws which affected his business as a brewery. In a few months’ time, brewers could no longer add salt to the beer which they did to make the drinker more thirsty, all pubs were legally obliged to close at 11pm, and the licensing hours were to be decided by the local authority with each borough having the right to become ‘dry’, also known as ‘alcohol free’. As expected, the law almost caused riots amongst the people and the breweries themselves, and with Freddy terrified that his business would struggle to survive, this could mean the end of his brewery. It was a turbulent time for Freddy Graves Moon, and although his mental disposition was questioned in court, with his highly paid solicitor objecting to the question, his mental state remains unknown. The night itself was peaceful. The street was quiet, and being a well-to-do suburb, it was routinely patrolled by PC Rowe from late afternoon until the time when the body was found. When he first passed, he noted that “all was calm”. Adelaide Matthews, parlourmaid to ‘Mrs Davey’ as Hannah Newington was known, heard the doorbell being rung at 5pm. As was her role, she answered the door, curtseyed to Mr Moon and showed this sour-faced gentleman in, as his housemaid Mary Ann Hale, scurried to the servant’s quarters below. Adelaide said “he was in the habit of coming to the house and used to dine there. I let him in. At that time Mrs Davey was in the billiard room”. As was protocol, “I showed him into the dining room”, where he would wait until the lady was ready to greet him, “but he went straight in”. He wasn’t upset, angry or anxious, as those who saw him recalled “it was as if he’d the weight of the world on his shoulders”. “By Mrs Davey’s order, I took a bottle of champagne into the billiard room”, and between them, they sunk a bottle of finest Bollinger, not out of celebration, but because that’s what wealthy people do. According to the staff, “before dinner, Mr Moon walked around the garden”. He was alone, and being a man of wealth and privilege, it was not the place of the servants to ask if he was okay, so they didn’t. At 7:30pm, they dined. Served by Hannah’s parlour maid, they ate soup, chicken, vegetables, an array of fresh bread, with a fine selection of champagne, brandy and claret with the sherry in an ornate cut-glass decanter, complete with hand-rolled cigars, cheeses and water biscuits, but no fruit or dessert. That said, with Hannah not expecting Freddy that night, the dinner itself was intended for her friends - Laura Pock & Catherine Bulin – but seeing his mood, to cheer him up, she had accommodated him. From what was overheard, Freddy was in a gloomy mood as he feared his brewery business was about to collapse, he had lost £10 backing the wrong horse, and he was perturbed that Hannah “had the eye of other men”. Which for anyone whether in or outside of that room shouldn’t have been a surprise. At half past eight, as Hannah & Freddy sat at the dining table supping brandies, Adelaide cleared away the dishes, and from the table she removed a small wicker basket of six bread knives to the sideboard. At around the same time, Laura Pock & Catherine Bulin, Hannah’s houseguests arrived after a hard day horse-riding and taking a long lunch and steady brunch. Welcomed in, olives were served, a bottle of claret was opened, and Laura & Catherine entertained them with music on the guitar and piano. Passing by on his beat, at roughly 9pm, PC Rowe said the noise emanating from the house was “a little more raucous”, and although, society said “this seemingly respectable house was a brothel”, as a working-class constable, it wasn’t his position to enquire about the private habits of the upper classes. This may have been a scandalous aspersion, but wherever Hannah went, her bad reputation followed. According to Adelaide, who had known Hannah and Freddy for 16 months, “Mrs Davey and Mr Moon appeared to be on affectionate terms, she called him ‘Fred’ and he called her ‘Flo’”, although she never questioned why the supposed wife of an Army Captain cavorted with an incorrigible bachelor. But what whatever was going on between them that night, the air was tinged with jealousy. At 9:30pm, Dr Phillips arrived. As the personal physician to Mrs Davey, he had been seeing her on what was described as a “purely professional basis” for the last six months, with the last six weeks seeing her bedbound, as owing to her severe alcohol problem he had failed to get her to ‘dry out’. When Dr Phillips was shown into the drawing room, Adelaide recalled “I thought by her eyes that Mrs Davey had been crying”. The doctor stayed briefly, with Fred not uttering a word to him, then he left. But was Freddy ambivalent, distracted, or jealous? Fuelled by champagne and liqueur, it was said that “Freddy was feeling perkier”, and with the young girls joining them for some after dinner fun, “Catherine played the piano as Laura romped on the floor, catching a decanter of sherry which Freddy threw into her lap”. As drunken antics go, that may seem innocent enough, but four months before, Freddy had done the same and the decanter had smashed. That time, he had apologised. Only this time, before he could, Hannah had sent the young ladies away, and the jubilant mood in the dining room was sullied, leaving a cold silence hanging like a dull cloud. But was Hannah drunk, angry, or upset? At 11:30pm, on his beat, PC Rowe passed 23 Newton Road “and noticed nothing unusual. I saw people going in and out, and I saw Mary Ann Hale, Mr Moon’s housemaid enter with a letter in her hand”. It was never explained what that letter was, and with it not being her job, Mary Ann never read it. But… …at the trial, William Pickford, Freddy’s friend stated, “Mrs Davey was jealous of him, as having put his arms around Catherine Bulin, he was not allowed to be left alone with her”, and a letter read out in court suggested that Freddy “enjoyed the favours of Catherine”, who he knew as “dear little Kitty”. According to the staff who were one floor below, and Laura & Catherine who were one floor above, at the time of the incident, they didn’t hear any shouts or scuffles, Hannah & Freddy were alone, and the knife basket had been moved to the table, possibly by Dr Phillips, who’d had himself a little snack. Mary Ann Hale recalled, “I was in the kitchen, immediately below the dining room, the first thing that attracted my attention was a fall… then I heard a scream”. Hannah rang the servant’s bell and shouted, “go for a doctor”, which Adelaide did, and as Mary Ann went upstairs, “I saw Mr Moon on the floor. Mrs Davey was kneeling by his side trying to undo his clothes and saying she was ‘trying to save him’”. A kitchen knife - missing from the breadbasket - was protruding from the left of his chest, just below his heart. With a steady pool of blood forming about his body, and a slowly decreasing pulse of red spurting from his once-white shirt, it was clear that Freddy’s life was ebbing away, second by second. With Hannah in a distressed state, the servants would state “she did everything to save him”, but as she sat crying and cradling him, knowing he was dead, Catherine Bulin heard her blub “I fear I did it". It was as near to a confession as anyone would get. At 12:15am, alerted to the scene, PC Rowe, PC Fewtrill and Dr Phillips entered 23 Newton Road. PC Rowe would state “I saw the deceased lying dead near the fireplace. There was a table with several bottles on it. Close to the body was a bowl with bloody water. In the drawing room I saw Mrs Davey sitting on the sofa. She was pulling off her jacket. The inside was lined with white and was saturated with blood. The upper part of her clothing was also covered with blood and her hair was disarranged”. With the partially clean knife having been removed from Freddy’s motionless chest and found lying in the fire fender near to his body, the Constable promptly arrested Hannah Newington alias Mrs Davey with a customary “consider yourself in custody”, and she was later charged with his murder. But was this an accident, a suicide, or a murder? With no witnesses to the incident itself, the police and the jury had to rely on the testimony of several medical experts who gave their opinion based on their expertise and knowledge. William Baker, a surgeon at St Bartholomew’s hospital said “the wound was downwards, forwards and inwards. The weapon took one uniform direction”. And although he would state, “It was not possible that the weapon might have been the result of an accident”, although he admitted he had “no special experience in the cases of stabbing”, he concluded “the wound was caused by another person”. Dr Phillips, Hannah’s physician, said “the wound was six inches deep, and it is not impossible that it was caused by him falling on the knife”, which Dr Royston also confirmed “as highly improbable”. But with Dr Canton, surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital and a lecturer in anatomy stating “it was most probable that the wound was accidental”, Mr Walton, a surgeon at St Mary’s agreeing “it might have been an accident”, or “possibly self-inflicted” and Mr Gay, chief surgeon at Great Northern Hospital concluding “the wound was more explainable as an accident than as the result of a deliberate stab”. With the jury left in a state of confusion, and with fingerprints not accepted as evidence in the British legal system until 1901, they were stuck in a quandary; was it an accident, a suicide, or murder? (End) Tried at the Old Bailey on the 13th of July 1871, before Mr Baron Channell, in a two-day-trial, Hannah Newington, alias Flora Davey pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder, with Dr Lewis agreeing with her defence that “the wounds may have been self-inflicted by Freddy” in a state of abject depression. As a married but abandoned woman who was kept by Captain Davey and was merely the mistress of Freddy Moon, as she would not have financially benefitted from his death, the prosecution reduced the charge to one of manslaughter, which meant – if found guilty – that she would not be executed. With Sargeant Parry wrapping up for the defence, stating “the prisoner and the deceased loved each other dearly… Mr Moon was depressed, and whatever occurred was done in a moment of fear”, having deliberated for half an hour, at 4pm, they returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. The judge concluded “she took up the knife, perhaps not anticipating the awful consequences, but she armed herself in order to meet the encounter of the deceased”. Taking into account that it wasn’t premeditated, she was sentenced to eight years in prison, and had to be carried from the dock. In her defence, Hannah stated “Freddy insulted me, when I asked him not to repeat those words, he flung a bottle at my head, I leapt up with the knife, he seized me, and we both fell down”. That’s it. Sent to Woking prison, Hannah spent the first two years in the prison infirmary owing to exhaustion. Having a relapse as she’d learned that her only daughter had died, Hannah Newington was released on 15th of September 1874, and she died early 1913. As for Freddy Moon, owing to the scandal of his death, his name was removed from Burke’s peerage, as well as from the brewery he had once owned. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
corner of Hammersmith Road and Munsden Street where George Heath picked up his "customers"
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX:
This is Part One of Three of Coldblooded. On Saturday 7th October 1944 at 2:15am, 34-year-old taxi-driver George Edward Heath drove his recently loaned grey V8 Ford Sedan east along Hammersmith Road. Forty minutes later, he would be dead. But why was George killed, for revenge, for sport, for money, or something stranger?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a blue exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Hammersmith'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Coldblooded. An adjective which describes two types of beings. The first is a reptile whose body temperature mirrors its environment, which is regulated by the cooling or warming of its blood, and with a slower metabolism, needs only feed sporadically on its prey. It is natural, essential, and its mode of hunting is akin to any other creature in nature’s kingdom. The second is a human who is callous, ruthless and cruel, and as a warm-blooded beast who shouldn’t need to hunt or feast - lacking any empathy - these spineless and soulless vultures seek out the weak, hunt for spoils and sport, and suckle on the gaping wounds of the innocent to feed their bloodlust. Wrongly attributed to the psychology of snakes and lizards, it’s a term we have reserved for society’s deadliest predators - sociopaths, murderers and psychopaths. And although they tend to hunt at night, our own coldblooded killers come in many forms - those you can spot, and those you cannot. This is part one of three of Coldblooded. George Edward Heath was an ordinary guy, doing an everyday job, working long hours to feed his family. Born on 23rd May 1910, George was raised in London, lived in London and would die in London. Aged 34, being five foot-eight in height and twelve stone in weight - with neatly cropped hair, a square head with a stern face, chiselled features and a prominent cleft chin - George was an unremarkable man who - like so many of us - blended seamlessly into society, never making waves or leaving ripples. In 1934, while working as a waiter at the Woodlands Hotel in the former Kent town of Chislehurst, he met and fell in love with Winifred Ivy Neve, a waitress, and by September 1935, the two were married in a simple ceremony at Lewisham Registry Office. As expected, two children followed, with George Anthony (his namesake) in 1936 and Arthur Barry in 1939, making their lives as happy as most others. Described by Winifred as “a restless man, who always wanted to be on the move” and was “very fond of money and having plenty of life”, shortly before their marriage, he quit his poorly paid waitering job and joined Godfrey Davis Ltd as a private hire driver, working irregular hours for a reliable income. In all honesty, there is very little to report about the life of George Heath, the ordinary London taxi driver. He worked hard making an honest wage, but like many, he never owned his own cab. He was likeable, friendly and polite, being a man with many friends, a steady routine and no enemies. And although his vices were drinking, smoking and gambling; he never lit-up in the car, he never drank on the job, and with as many wins as he had losses, betting on horses was just a hobby to busy his brain. By 1938, George may have thought that following the death of his parents that he had faced his share of grief, but like so many millions across this city and beyond, the Grim Reaper was hoving into view. The Second World War was a time of upheaval and turmoil, as lives were lost, families were fractured, and this sprawling metropolis of the innocent became a sky-borne target for destruction and death. In September 1939, with the younger fitter men conscripted as an endless wall of meat for the cannon fire, George was enlisted as a War Reserve Policeman patrolling the lawless streets of Victoria. Later becoming a unit driver for the Royal Army Service Corps in Mitcham, having been discharged in August, he was briefly a delivery driver for the Entertainment Service Association as well as Hovis the bakers. Like so many, his life was in chaos... only fate was not on his side. On the night of 18th September 1940, eleven days into an eight month-long bombing campaign by the Luftwaffe, George was at home at 6 Sangora Road in Battersea - three streets from Clapham Junction railway station, a vital mainline from the south and a key strategic target for their devastating blitz. As distant hum of bombers loomed overhead, although his wife and boys were safe elsewhere, George was not. And as he hunkered down; being encircled by the blast of landmines on Strathblaine Road, the shockwaves of 20 kilo bombs on Plough Road, and a fiery wall as incendiaries exploding on Brussels Road, trapped in an epicentre of superhot flames and flying shrapnel, George survived, but only just. Committed to Long Grove, a psychiatric hospital in Epsom for a full year with what we would call PTSD, although physically well, upon his discharge on the 21st of August 1941, George was a changed man – gruff and lost - but still keen to work hard, do his bit, and to provide for his family, so he soldiered on. In 1942, he moved his family to Hard’s Cottages in Ewell, Surrey, as far from the bombs as possible. And although his landlady described him as “a model lodger who was devoted to wife and children”, growing unhappy, they separated in Autumn 1943, he returned to London to work as a cabbie, and in July 1944 he started seeing Violet Fleisig, a married mother-of-two while her husband served overseas. George Heath had survived so much. And yet, it wasn’t a bomb which would snuff out his life, as merely being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time… (a taxi drives along a street) …fate put him in the path of a coldblooded killer. The last time he saw his wife was on 21st July. He stayed the night, he kissed his kids, he gave her £7 on top of the £4 he sent each week, and then did his shift even though he had been bitten by a dog. As a private hire cabbie, George worked antisocial hours from 7:30pm to 4am to pull in the nighttime crowd of the West End, driving a slew of faceless strangers to familiar and uncharted parts of the city. On Tuesday 26th of September 1944, eleven days before his murder, George visited the garage of Harry Hawkins at Sunninghill in Ascot to hire a car. Handing over a cheque for £14 (£750 today) as security, that day he drove away a nearly new grey Ford V8 four-door saloon with the registration plate RD8955. With no dents, being pristine clean, and with the handbrake in full working order, George was required to return it by Saturday 7th October at 9am, as it was booked up to drive passengers to Ascot Races. George had every plan to keep that promise, as to him, the car was merely a means of making money to feed his family, but to his callous killer, it was the place where he would breathe his last breath. Friday 6th October was George’s last day alive, although he didn’t know that. Dressed in a grey flannel suit, a white shirt, brown brogues and a dark blue Melton overcoat, George undertook his pre-work routine of putting everything where it was needed; a silver-plated pencil and a slightly leaky fountain pen in his breast pocket to fill in his cabbie’s logbook, a Swiss made Bentima watch on his wrist with luminous figures as the city was still in blackout, a cigarette case with an odd sliding mechanism, and a black leather wallet containing a photo of his girlfriend Violet and his kids. At 7pm, he met Violet at the Pineapple pub where his autopsy would state he ate a meal of potatoes, and as always, he drank no alcohol. She said his mood was good, he wasn’t anxious or worried. And back at her flat at 45 Cumberland Street in Westminster, he had a shave, and agreed that at 8am, he’d take her and two pals to Ascot Races, giving him time (as promised) to return the car to Harry Hawkins. Starting at 9pm, he prowled for pick-ups in the West End, but finding the streets quite quiet, he swung by Godfrey Davis Ltd by Victoria Station, the private hire firm he had worked at for almost a decade, and chatted to Arthur Green, his pal of 14 years to see if there were any jobs to be swung his way. The pickings were slim, as the recent barrage of V1 rocket attacks had sent a second wave of civilians to leave the city behind, so with only £7 in his wallet, he returned twice at 10:30pm and 11:05pm, but he was unable to accept a job as “he had a pickup at The Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly”. As always, George left his pal wishing him “all the best” and saying, “see you later” - only this time, he would not. The next four hours of George’s life as a cabbie in that car are missing. We don’t know where he went, where he travelled to, what he charged, or who he carried, as his driver’s logbook was never found. The night was bitterly cold and frustratingly wet, and with the wartime blackout still in-force meaning that not a single streetlight was on, the road was black, the pavement was in shadow, and even the dull yellow headlights of George’s grey V8 Ford Sedan had been narrowed to just two thin little slits. At 2:15am, just two hours before his shift was due to end, while driving from Hammersmith Broadway, as he passed Cadby Hall on the Hammersmith Road, he was flagged down by a young lady (“taxi”). Pulling up to the corner of Munden Street, as she peeped inside his cab, although it was as dark as the blackest night, George could see she had brown curled hair, pale skin and red lips, and as a slim girl in a fashionable floral print dress, her perfume was just a little heavy as she was bunged up with a cold. In a Welsh accent she asked, “are you a taxi?” - which was a logical question as with no signs, no ‘for hire’ light and no passengers in the backseat, as owing to rationing, taxis were shared to save on fuel and tyres, so unlike London’s black cabs, private hires were hard to tell apart from other cars. George replied “private hire, where do you want to go?”, at which she said “wait a minute” and went back to the dark damp doorway, where a man, possibly her boyfriend, was sheltering from the wind and rain. For a minute, George waited, and although it irked him, he knew that beggars can’t be choosers when the night was as quiet as this, so for a short while he waited, unwittingly making a fateful decision. A moment later, a stocky man with a boyish face was led from the shadows by the girl. Dressed in the green trousers and a khaki tunic of a US Army officer, as he said “take us to the top of King Street” - a ride of just five minutes and ten shillings - it was clear that this was an American of European decent. As far as we know, George had no suspicions that his life was about to end, as this couple of lovebirds on a night-out sat in the dark of his backseat, the girl behind the passenger’s seat and the man behind him, as they silently watched the world go by - George focussed on the road, too tired for chitchat. George Heath was an ordinary man, doing his regular job, who was chosen at random… …and yet, he was just two and half miles from his murder, and barely forty minutes from his death. As the taxi drove down King Street, with this usually busy shopping district dark and deserted, not a sight nor sound emanated from the thick rows of shops, pubs and lodgings on either side. In the five minutes it took to drive its full length, nobody uttered a word, until at the junction of Goldhawk Road, George gruffly broke the silence – “okay, well, we’ve passed King Street, where do you want to go?”. The soldier uttered “it’s further on, I don’t mind paying more”, and although (as a cabbie) George was used to passengers dithering, across the next ten minutes as they drove a further one and a half miles, the man kept uttering “a bit further, no further still, a bit more”, as if he was looking for somewhere or someone, when in fact, he was looking for a dark and isolated spot to kill a cabbie in cold blood. The passenger’s indecision had riled George, but needing the fare, he said nothing and carried on, not knowing that this was the last time he would drive down the Chiswick High Road or see another day. At the Chiswick roundabout, George bluntly barked “this is the Great West Road, where now?”. Only this was it. It was an odd place for a couple to depart being far from any houses and surrounded by a few empty factories which were guarded by nightwatchmen, but it was the perfect place for a killing. “Just here” the solider said, being one of the last words George would ever hear, as he pulled the taxi into an unnamed layby for the last time, and as George applied the handbrake, his killer cocked his .45 calibre US Army pistol, which George didn’t hear or react to. Instead, being a man of manners whose shift was almost done, he reached over the passenger’s seat to unlock the left rear-door for the lady. The time was 2:30am. (Bang) Whether George knew what had happened is uncertain, as the loud explosion rang in his ears, a wetness poured down his back, and a sharp pain pierced his chest. Moaning loudly, he slumped over the steering wheel, unaware that a hot bullet had torn into his back, splitting his sixth rib and fracturing his right third rib as it exited his chest, as splintered lead ruptured his lung and severed his spinal cord. And as George lay motionless and silent, as he slowly drowned as his vital organs bled, he would live for another fifteen minutes, but for every single second, he would be paralysed and at his killer’s whim. Unable to fight or flee, with his head slumped on his chest, George heard his killer shout “move over, or I’ll give you another” as he was shoved across to the passenger’s seat and the car drove off at speed. The man was driving, and although he couldn’t see, George would have felt it as they crossed the River Thames at Kew Bridge, sped down Kew Road and onto Twickenham Road heading south-west, as with each mile they drove, he got weaker, and colder, and ever closer to death, but his killer didn’t care. “Check his pockets”, the American soldier barked, and although George could barely breathe in short gasps as his failing body echoed with an ever-increasing death rattle, rather than helping him live, like a vulture, the Welsh woman stole his watch, his wallet, his fountain pen and pencil, his cigarette lighter and a case, pocketing £4 in notes, some silver coins, a few petrol coupons, and then binning the rest. To them, it was nothing but worthless tat. It didn’t matter that everything was precious to him; his driving licence which gave him a job, his cabbie’s logbook which was a history of his career, a watch he was given as a gift, a pen he had borrowed from his girlfriend, a letter from his wife, and a treasured photo of his boys – aged just five and eight – who he would never see again, nor say “goodbye” to. As the Ford V8 was floored down Twickenham Bridge and onto the Chertsey Road, it would have been then that 34-year-old George Edward Heath had died, a life snuffed out for the contents of his pockets. No prayer was said for the dead man, just a desire to dump him and flee. The car was driven at speed onto the Staines Road West, onto Kingston Road and Stainash Parade to Knowles Green, sixteen and a half miles from the Chiswick roundabout, and as his slowly cooling body lay slumped in the passenger’s seat, it shimmied back and forth as the car turned onto an old dirt road. Amidst a dark canopy of trees, the car stopped, the engine now as silent as George’s heart. With the passenger’s door opened to the cold night air, the man dragged him out by his armpits as the woman grabbed his legs, and with no ceremony or send off, they rolled his body into a ditch, like rubbish. Wiping his filthy blood off their hands with the handkerchief they had stolen from his overcoat, they both got in his car and fled, leaving his cold dead carcase out in the wild where the animals could feast. And as they had struggled to ride the uneven grass and dirt-track, although there was one witness – Reginald Turney of Stainash Crescent who was sleeping in his Anderson shelter when he was awoken by a car’s engine revving hard as if it was driving on bumpy ground - he ignored it and fell asleep. The killer’s journey back was a chance to dispose of the evidence. As the woman drove, the man examined the spoils of his killing, tossing the wallet out of the window and scattering the papers and photos along the Great West Road. Having found the bullet casing using the dead man’s torch, he flung that too. And as the grey Ford V8 was driven back to Hammersmith, it was hidden among a slew of civilian and military vehicles in a car park behind the old Gaumont Cinema. There, they parked up, applied the now slightly dodgy handbrake, cleaned out any of the dead man’s belongings, and wiped down the car with a handkerchief inside and out, so that – apart from a small dent on the nearside front door and on the passenger’s dashboard – it looked just like any other car. But did the killer run? No. Being callous and coldblooded, with his bloodlust satisfied and needing to fill his belly, they went to the Black & White café in Hammersmith Broadway to have tea, chips and egg. It didn’t matter that a man was dead and lying in a ditch, as – to him – being quarter-to-four in the morning, all he wanted was to get home, to bed, to sleep. And although he asked one of the cabbies in that café to drive them - using the dead man’s money, and possibly asking one of his friends who was unaware that his pal was dead, and soon that his wife, girlfriend and children would all be grieving – they declined. So, as he walked back to the woman’s flat on King Street for sweet dreams and some nookie, just a short walk from where this vicious odyssey had begun, it is said that this exchange between them took place; she said “he’s dead isn’t he?”, he replied “yeah”, she said “that’s coldblooded murder then, isn’t it? How could you do it?”, as he said “people in my profession haven’t the time to think”. (End) The next morning, he sold off George’s possessions for so few pounds that didn’t last them the rest of the day. Everyone knew they were nicked, but being wartime, even the most decent of people were happy to buy anything which was unavailable, on the black market as long as no questions were asked. The K he sold for eight shillings to a confectioner called Fleischman. The cigarette case and lighter he sold to his old pal Len Bexley, as repayment for a debt. The watch with the luminous figures he sold for £5 to Morris Levene. And having scattered the evidence of his heinous crime among a sea of seemingly innocent people, he knew that he would be safe, as no-one would be likely to tell the police or to brag to friends that they had willingly purchased stolen goods. That day, to celebrate his good fortune, they went to the pub and got pissed, they headed to the café and had a fry-up, they went to the White City Stadium and placed a few bets on a dog, and then headed to the cinema to see Christmas Holiday, a crime thriller starring Deanna Durban & Gene Kelly. By the end of the day, every penny he had made by killing George Heath was gone. His death was as meaningless as the rind on bacon, and his life as disposable as his photographs he had tossed away. For George’s family, their grief would last a lifetime, but for his killer, this cruel and callous act was just as quickly forgotten. It was a murder committed by a coldblooded psychopath… …but who was the cruelest? Part two of three continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
Fursecroft in Marylebone, the former home of Harry Michaelson
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE:
At 5:15am, on the Boxing Day morning of 1948, cartoonist Harry Michaelson was found on his doorstep of Flat 75 at Fursecroft in Marylebone, nursing a bloody wound to his head. With no memory of what had happened, the police relied on the evidence. But having made a lazy assumption, they almost derailed the entire investigation.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a black exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Marble Arch'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on George Street in Marylebone, W1; one street south of the first killing by the Blackout Ripper, two streets east of the failed hit on the exiled Iraqi general, a few doors down from the deaf son’s desperate mum, and a few doors up from Dot the Deadly - coming soon to Murder Mile. Built in the 1930s, Fursecroft is a posh ten-storey Edwardian mansion block, the kind you’d expect to see in Poirot, where for 90 minutes the famous Belgian detective twists his little moustache and jiggles his grey cells – all the while dreaming of waffles, chocolate, TinTin and moule et frites, as what else do Belgian’s do - only to conclude that – dun-dun-duuuuhn, the killer was the slutty bigamist… again. And yet, Marylebone’s own detectives almost failed to solve a simple case owing to an assumption. On the Boxing Day morning of 1948, 50-year-old Harry Michaelson was found on his doorstep at Flat 75. With a towel to his forehead, blood running down his face, and no memory of what had occurred, with no signs of forced entry, the police assumed they were hunting an assailant who Harry had let in. Only he hadn’t. And although they had supposedly interrogated every detail given by the eyewitnesses who knew Harry well, it took a sharp-eyed constable with a suspicious nose to truly trap his murderer. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 233: Sketches. Eugene Fordsworthe said, “assumption is the mother of all mistakes”. It’s a crime we’ve all committed, as sometimes, it’s too easy to assume the most logical answer must be the right answer. For us, it’s a mistake we can make with very little consequences, but for detectives, it can derail an investigation. Harry Saul Michaelson was born on the 14th of December 1898, being raised in a loving well-educated middle-class family and spending most of his five decades in and around Willesden and Paddington. Being five foot six and sparsely built, those who knew Harry described him as a cheery and pleasant gentleman who was always kind, and - as a talented cartoonist and an acclaimed commercial artist – he loved to wile away his free time by sketching friends and strangers over a cup of tea and a chat. But painting was also how he made his living. Nicknamed ‘one minute Michaelson’, Harry toured the theatres of Great Britain as a ‘lightening cartoonist’ who wowed the crowds with his speedy sketching as part of a music hall act. As an immensely creative man who brought joy to the masses, especially as the bombs of the Luftwaffe pummelled every British city while the Second World War raged on, it made sense that Harry would fall in love – possibly on the circuit - with a talented pianist called Anna. In November 1938, they married at Willesden Registry Office, and as performers with no children, it was said that they toured together. But with Harry having contracted malaria during the First World War – and still suffering from the long-term effects of fevers, chills, aches and pains, as well as stomach problems and nerves - described by his younger brother as “highly strung”, for the sake of his health, he gave up performing, and continued working from home with a set of paints and an easel by his bed. In 1941, Harry & Anna moved into a small bed-sitting room at Flat 75 of Fursecroft in Marylebone. As a basement flat, the view from its two casement windows wasn’t much as it overlooked the concrete wall below the corner of Brown Street and Nutford Place, but as a modern block with solid locks and being staffed by a team of porters, day and night, what they paid for was the amenities and security. For Harry, who spent most of his days alone in this tiny two roomed flat, it had everything he needed; a kitchen-cum-bathroom with a toilet and a bath in the same room as a gas hob (which for then was normal), and a bed-sitting room with two single beds, a phone, a gas fire, a wealth of artwork, a day bed for resting while he sketched with an easel, paints and heaped stacks of magazines and papers for reference, as well as a tubular metal chair where his guests could sit as they posed for their portraits. As a polite but solitary figure, he always greeted the porters, he went for his morning coffee at Maison Lyonese in nearby Marble Arch, and although a semi-regular guest at Sketch (an artist member’s club), not being much of a drinker owing to gastric issues, he spent most of his time alone in his flat, painting. He wasn’t well-off but he wasn’t broke, he wasn’t a bad man just kind and quiet, and although his wife had recently recovered from an overdose of sleeping pills owing to Harry uncovering her affair with a car dealer called George Jenkinson, they had contemplated getting a divorce, but resolved it amicably. Harry Michaelson was just an ordinary chap… …so, who would want to kill him, and why? Friday 24th of December 1948. Christmas Eve. Across the city, with rationing partially in force, a festive hum of excitement and frivolity rippled across this brightly lit city as the people shopped for presents. That day, from his Post Office savings account, Harry withdrew £3 (roughly £130 today) to purchase a “a chicken and a piece of lamb”, as well as £2 in silver so he could tip the porters over the holidays. The Christmas Day itself was bright, but with no snow, a cold wind whistled down George Street. Being a man whose body swung from fevers to chills owing to a distant bout of Malaria, even though it was barely above freezing, for the last seven years he’d left his thin bedroom window and his flat door ajar to help circulate the fresh air, but with a trusty team of porters on duty, Harry had always felt safe. Rising at 8am, as always, their little flat hadn’t a single Christmas decoration up, as being Jewish, they didn’t celebrate the holiday, so it didn’t bother them in the slightest that they would spend it apart. At 9am, hired to perform at a slew of hotels in the seaside town of Bournemouth until just after Boxing Day, Anna kissed Harry goodbye and headed off, not knowing that she would never see him again. For Harry, it was a simple day. Throughout the afternoon, as he came across them, he handed each porter several shillings as a thank you for their work and said to one-and-all “here’s wishing you all the best”, He asked the head porter if he could pop the chicken and lamb in their freezer ready for his wife’s return. And at 6pm, 8pm and 10pm, he left via the main door, as having run out of bread – being Jewish – he had also forgotten that today being Christmas Day that most of the bakers would be shut. At 10pm, he returned, and was greeted by the night porters - Samuel Freeland and Frederick Newman - who said that (as usual) he was in a good mood and - although breadless - he wished them both well. As was his routine, Harry undressed, putting his brown striped suit on the chair, his shoes by the bed, a glass of water by the bedside phone, and having finished a good book, in the single bed nearest the door, he drifted off to sleep, snoring loudly, as the fresh winter air ventilated this usually stuffy flat. For the two porters, it was a busy night, as of the 300+ tenants at Fursecroft, several Christmas parties ensured that a steady stream of guests entered and exited via both sets of main doors. Being routine, both were locked at midnight, only the porters had the keys, every guest or resident was only escorted in or out after that hour by the two night-porters, and both doors were only unlocked at 7:30am. Samuel and Frederick both confirmed that it was an uneventful night… …only for Harry, it was a night that (if he could) he would never forget. At 5:15am, night porter Samuel Freeland heard a voice he recognised calling from downstairs, as Harry shouted “Porter! Porter!”. At the door of Flat 75, dressed in his pyjamas and a robe, the ghostly white frame of Harry stood, holding a towel to his head, as a stream of blood ran down his panicked face. Samuel asked, “what happened?”, at which Harry bluntly replied, “never mind, call an ambulance, I’m bleeding like a pig”. Only what Samuel, and possibly Harry, didn’t realise was that Harry already had. With the ambulance on its way, as the porters led Harry to the reception, stumbling and trembling, it was clear that he was terrified, and although he cried – “I am a finished old man. I am dying. I can feel it in my bones and the blood pumping in my brain” - it was clear he had no idea what had happened. The porters assumed he’d had an accident, as nobody had heard a break-in, a scream or an assault. Arriving at St Mary’s hospital at 5:38am, with a single wound to his right temple which was no different to any other injury caused by a domestic slip or tumble, x-raying this 1 ½ inch laceration, a fracture to the skull was identified, a blood clot was removed, and although initially conscious, Harry repeated “I can’t tell you what happened. I don’t know. I have not been in a fight or been drinking. I have not hit my head. All I know is that I discovered a lump on my head which is bleeding and I know I won’t live”. Drifting into a coma, the next day at 12:45pm, Harry died of his injuries… …unable to tell the Police anything about his “accident”. With the investigation headed up by Superintendent Beveridge, DDI Jamieson and Inspector Grange, Harry’s flat didn’t seem like the scene of an assault. Far from it. It was messy, but there was no sign of a struggle. With all three windows locked from within, there was no forced entry. And with blood dotted in a steady line upon the carpets between the bedroom, bathroom and hallway, he grabbed a towel to stem the wound, he made a call for an ambulance, and then he collapsed upon his bed. If it was an attack, it was motiveless, as nothing seemed to be missing; his cheque book was on the side, he had 16 shillings in his suit pockets, and several pieces of saleable artwork hadn’t been touched. With no obvious weapon found, and only Harry’s hair and blood identified, it didn’t seem like a break-in by a stranger, so the police assumed that – if Harry had been attacked – he had let his assailant in. Several suspects were considered: every guest at the Christmas parties in that block were questioned and George Jenkinson (his wife’s former lover) was quizzed, but all had a cast iron alibi. With a wealth of sketches featuring unknown people who had posed for Harry found in his bedroom, although it was assumed that he may have sketched his killer before the attack, this was proven to be unlikely. And even though two of the porters had criminal records with one for violence, all eight were ruled out. The lack of evidence was driving the detectives towards a dangerous assumption, that “we believe he knew his killer”, and although “the theory that he was attacked by a walk-in thief has not been ruled out”, it didn’t seem logical that a stranger would break-in, steal nothing and leave as if he wasn’t there. On closer examination, Anna found that Harry’s black leather wallet was missing from inside of his suit jacket, and hidden by the steady stream of blood drops by his bed, on the leg of the metal tubular chair lay a finger and palm print which didn’t belong to Harry, Anna, the police or any of the porters. With the autopsy conducted by Dr Donald Teare, identifying two crescent shaped fractures to the right of his skull, one 5 ½ inches and the other 2 ½ inches long which split into sharp shards and punctured his brain, it was confirmed “that the tubular steel chair was the most likely cause of the wounds”. This was no accident. This was a murder. But who had killed Harry, and why? Three weeks after his death, the police had hit a brick wall. They had assumed that he had known his assailant, but with Harry being a solitary figure, they had exhausted every suspect, and with no sign of a break-in or a struggle, his killer was unlikely to be a burglar – so who had attacked him was unknown? The breakthrough in the investigation came down to an off-duty constable, unconnected to the case. On Tuesday 18th of January 1949, PC Walsh spotted two men in dark clothes acting suspiciously in St John’s Wood, outside of two affluent houses on Grove End and Hamilton Terrace. And as they dipped between the shadows, slipped down dark alleys, and furtively peeped in through unlit windows, calling for backup, at 5:55pm, PC Walsh arrested 26-year-old Thomas Collier and 21-year-old Harry Lewis. With the details of every local burglar being passed to the murder squad, taking their fingerprints, police found a perfect match to the murder of Harry Michaelson, which were linked to Harry Lewis. Questioned at Paddington police station, Harry Lewis would swiftly confess “it has come at last. I didn’t think I would get away with it. When I read about it in the newspapers, I knew he was the man I hit”. But who was he, and why had he murdered Harry? Born 28 years before and 170 miles north-west of Harry Michaelson’s birthplace, Harry Lewis was the illegitimate son of Annie Lewis, a single mother. Unable to support herself, being admitted to the Poor Law Institution at Hawarden in north-east Wales, aged three, Harry Lewis was abandoned and for the rest of his childhood, he would be bounced from foster parents to orphanages and penal institutions. From ages three to nine, he spent in the dark depressing gloom of the Cottage Homes orphanage in Holywell, where a lack of love left him feeling abandoned, lost and angry at the world. For one year, he was briefly boarded-out to a Mrs Williams in Leeswood, and although she said he was “likable and well-behaved”, getting sick, he was sent back to the orphanage where he would stay for nine years. Aged twelve, with the Second World War having erupted, against his will, he was sent to the Nautical Training School at Portishead, where destitute and neglected boys were giving hard military discipline, being barked at and bullied by authority figures, with the aim to find him a role in the Merchant Navy. Subjected to four years of compulsory discipline, his report describes him as “unsatisfactory… with numerous instances of dishonesty and theft… he is a boy greatly lacking in decent moral principles”. Booted out of the Nautical Training School and bounced back the Public Institution at Holywell, his file lists him as “troublesome, insolent, unmanageable and a confirmed thief”, and lasting a few weeks as a labourer at the Steel Works in Shotton, Harry was seen as “a poor workman and mentally weak”. What followed was a series of committals to institutions and petty criminal acts. In December 1943, aged 16, he was placed on probation back at the Holywell Public Institution, where he absconded. In January 1944, he was sentenced to 28 days for stealing cigarettes. The next month, he was committed to two years at the Approved Probation Home for Youths in Stonebridge Park. And although aged 17, having enlisted as a private in the Middlesex Regiment to avoid more time in borstal; he was fined £7 in Chester for forgery, sentenced to 2 years at Marylebone for theft, and discharged from the Army for theft and assaulting a woman, that had been his entire life up unto the age of 20. On 7th December 1948, just 18 days before, Harry Lewis was released from Wormwood Scrubs prison. Described as “a violent and undisciplined man whose record reveals no redeeming features”, even though he was married and had a three-year-old child; he didn’t have a job, he didn’t have a home, his wife had – rightfully – fled from her violent abusive husband, and he had nothing. Abandoned, just like he had been as a baby, he drifted across the city, with no money, no hope, no life and no future. By the Christmas Day of 1948, Harry Lewis had never met Harry Michaelson… …he didn’t know him, and he had nothing against him - he was a stranger. It’s a strange thought, but while the city celebrated Christmas, both Harry’s were sat alone; with Harry Michaelson in a basement flat in Marylebone, and Harry Lewis in a cheap B&B in Euston. And whereas one made his living bringing joy with his sketches, the other knew nothing but theft, “It was early on Sunday morning”, Harry Lewis said, “I’d no money and I thought I’d break into a house and get some”. It was between 2am and 3am, when passing the corner of Brown Street and Nutford Place, that Harry Lewis happened to stumble upon a thin window left open a crack, by a man whose dose of malaria 30 years before had left his body swinging from fevers to chills, even on a cold night like this. “There was a big drop down into the basement, so I jumped the railings and dropped”, far from the porter’s view. Hidden in the dark, as the convicted burglar crept along this concrete slit, “I opened the window and heard a man snoring”. Breaking into a dark but occupied flat was riddled with risks like injury, capture, arrest and even death, but being desperate, it was worth the risk, just as long as Harry was silent. “I climbed in. It was dark. I was feeling my way round and came to the bottom of a bed at the far end”. That being Harry’s bed, in which he slept, his slumber just a single sound from being broken. “A man’s trousers was lying on a metal chair, I took a wallet, some coins, and I then went out into the hall”. As a stranger staggering about in an unfamiliar flat, he had no idea that the hall only led to the kitchen-cum-bathroom with very little in it, the corridors of Furzecroft which were patrolled by night porters, a set of main doors which had been locked many hours before, and that the only item of any real value which was worth stealing was the wallet. Harry didn’t know that, but by then, his luck had run out. “When I got into the hall, a chap sat up in bed and said who’s there”, Harry: “who’s there?”. With the owner awake, the only way out was through him and the window from which he’d entered, “the chap was just getting out of bed. I was frightened of getting caught… so I picked up the metal chair. It was the first thing I could put my hands on, and I thought I could knock him out with it, just a bash on the head. He fell, but started getting up again. I swung the chair again and gave him another bash. He was then leaning against the wall on his left side. I then dropped the chair and left, the way I come in”. Fleeing into the cold night, and hopping into a taxi on Edgware Road, the burglar of 75 Fursecroft got away with four £1 notes and two 10-shilling notes, barely enough to last him until the end of the week. It was a random attack by a total stranger for the sake of some quick cash. Harry Michaelson was small and sick, so there was unlikely to be a struggle. And with the attack swift, very little to steal, and no obvious point of entry or exit, the detectives had made a lazy assumption based on the evidence they had, but it was wrong, and they wouldn’t realise the truth until Harry Lewis made a full confession. Back in the flat, slumped upon his bed, as blood poured down his head, the detectives wouldn’t suspect that the thin casement window was how the burglar had got in, as – doing what anyone else would do having been attacked in their home – Harry Michaelson had locked it and drew the curtain. It’s tragic, but Harry could have survived his attack. Only, being helpless and alone, with his wife many miles south, the porters above and his neighbours asleep having heard nothing, stumbling about his lonely flat with no memory of what had happened, the sharp shards of his fractured skull dug into his brain, leaving him confused, bleeding and afraid. It’s likely he’d spent at least two hours, maybe three, either collapsed on his bed or wandering about unsure why his head was bleeding. But having momentarily regained a short sense of consciousness, he phoned for an ambulance at 5:12am, and called the porter “Porter!” three minutes after that. Thirty-three hours later, Harry Michaelson was dead. (End) Tried at the Old Bailey on 9th of March 1949, before Lord Chief Justice Goddard, Harry Lewis pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the murder of Harry Michaelson. He didn’t deny the burglary or the attack, stating “I saw in the newspapers a photo of the window I had got through, and I realised the man I had hit was dead. I did not know the dead man. It was just a chance shot that I entered the place that night. And although I hit him hard, I did not mean to kill him. I did it just to get away without being caught”. That same day, although one of the jury had to be expelled as he objected to the death penalty, a jury of ten men and two women deliberated for 35 minutes and unanimously found him guilty of murder. Sympathising with his tragic upbringing, the jury recommended mercy for Harry Lewis, but with his appeal was dismissed on the 21st of April, he was executed by hanging that very same day. Harry Michaelson was buried in East Ham Jewish Cemetery and Harry Lewis was buried in Pentonville Prison. That said, the murder of Harry Michaelson might never have been solved, had the detectives not been so dogged as to assume that he had let in his killer. As Eugene Fordsworthe said, “assumption is the mother of all mistakes” and by making a simple assumption, they had made the mother of all mistakes. And although there was a small chance that as he lay in his hospital bed, that ‘one minute Michaelson’ could sketch his killer as the detectives hoped, by that point, that’s all his memory was – sketches. 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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47 Frith Street in Soho, formerly the Peeperama Striptease
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO:
On Friday 23rd April 1960, 23-year-old Elaine Baker finished her shift as a striptease artiste at the Peeperama on 47 Frith Street in Soho. It was an odd job for her to do, as she was so quiet and shy. Fifteen minutes after her arrival back home at 19 Tredegar Square in Bow, East London, she stabbed her boyfriend to death. But why?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a dark grey/sludgy coloured exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Soho', among the mess of markers. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Frith Street in Soho, W1; one street north of the Taj Mahal killing, a few doors south of the five-shilling striptease, the same building as the last failed erection of The Blackout Ripper, and a few doors down from the shopkeeper who sold more than bacon - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 47 Frith Street currently stands Ronny Scott’s jazz club, a musical institution, where nightly swarms of hipsters’ form - wearing cravats, bowties, monocles, feather boas and top hats, as nothing says ‘I have no personality’ like dressing like a Victorian street urchin at a Mardi Gras – and where they hope to hear some nice jazz, like, you know, something with a recognisable melody? But instead they end up listening to that free-form bollocks which sounds like an asthmatic stomping a seal pup to death. Back in the 1960s, at 47 Frith Street was a seedy little strip-club called Peeperama, where sad losers got their jollies by ogling bored ladies jiggling their wobbly bits. One of those ladies was Elaine Baker, a young woman with dreams, who was described as “one of the shyest striptease artistes I have ever met”, and although it looked as if she was having fun, behind her painted-on smile lay pain and anger. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 232: Finally, a home. Everybody has a dream. For some, it’s something they can achieve by themselves; whether to paint, to write or to build a business, where all they need is themselves and belief. Whereas for others like Elaine, her dream of a home, a marriage and several children required a second person - a husband. Elaine Baker began life as Elaine Barkworth on the 10th of August 1936. She said she knew little about her early life, her family and her upbringing, incorrectly telling the Police that she was born in Manchester, but maybe her childhood was something she had chosen to forget? Raised in the district of Bucklow in Cheshire, she never spoke of her father, she didn’t have a loving relationship with her mother, and as at least one of five siblings, she had two brothers and two sisters, but being taken into care when she was only 12, she spent most of her formative years in foster care. Denied love and guidance, as she was bounced between care homes and foster parents owing to her parent’s neglect, although her abandonment had made her incredibly caring and maternal with a deep desire to be loved but also to give love, regressing into herself, she became the epitome of shyness. As a short curvy redhead with pale skin and freckles, she always looked young, and later described as “a pathetic little creature”, for the price of a kiss, a hug or a little compassion, often she was easily led. In 1954, when she was 18, her foster mother died. And although legally an adult, no longer being the burden of the council’s responsibility, she was out on her own, even though she was still only a child. Described as being of lower-than-average intelligence owing to inconsistent schooling, she earned her way as a single girl through a series of manual jobs in laundries and hotels, and through necessity, she received three minor convictions: for the theft of a coat and stockings, a breach of probation and ‘the use of insulting words’. She wasn’t a bad person, she just lacked trust in others, and for good reason. Her late teens were riddled with more tragedy than most people could cope with in a lifetime. In 1953, aged 17, she lost all contact with her mother and her father she couldn’t remember. On 18th of August 1955, aged 19, as part of her dream, she gave birth to a child, but being illegitimate in an era when a single mother was as sinful as theft, she was forced to give it up for adoption. And on 14th May 1956, after just three weeks of unhappy abusive marriage to Karl G Baker, yet another dream had shattered. In August 1958, with no family, no home, no children and no marriage, every part of her fantasy was broken, and being desperate to leave all of her pain behind, she fled to London to start a new life. Three months later, she would meet Ronnie, the man of her dreams. As a shy uncertain girl, it took real courage to come out from behind her shadow to work as a cinema usherette at the Troxy on East London’s Commercial Road. Burdened by a soft voice, a quiet manner and a pale face which blushed like a little cherry tomato whenever a stranger spoke a few words to her, although far from outgoing, maybe it was her childlike qualities which lured Ronnie towards her? Three years her junior, 20-year-old Ronald was born and raised in London. As a six-foot three-inch hunk of loveliness, with a boyish face, a mop of dark hair and a big beaming smile, although he towered over this tiny redhead, Elaine was instantly smitten. Seeing him as marriage material, they moved in together, and with him earning three times her wage as a labourer, life looked promising. Elaine would state “for six or seven months we have lived together as man and wife” in different parts of East London. Unable to afford much, at the start of March, they moved into a small basement room in a shared lodging at 19 Tredegar Square in Bow. And although it wasn’t much, it was their home. The kitchen they shared with several others, but that was no problem, as it was clean, it had the latest mod-cons and most of the lodgers were quiet and helpful. Barely 10 feet square and with not even enough space to swing the proverbial cat, although their bed sitting room was a little pokey, it had everything this young couple needed; a sofa which folded out into a bed, a radio to play their records on, a decent sized wardrobe for all of their clothes, and even two porcelain cats to make it look nice. It was the start of something special for Elaine. Finally, she had a home. A place to call her own. With a job that she liked, the man who she loved, and – having come from nothing – there was talk of the things that she dreamed of the most, a happy marriage, many babies and a life of unbridled happiness. Her dream had finally come true… …and yet, once again, it would end in tragedy. It made sense that Ronnie paid the lion’s share of the bills, as he earned £11 per week whereas she only took in enough for the rent and little more than that. But as a bone-idle dawdler who despised the daily grind and would rather spaff his cash up the wall by seeing his pals and quaffing pints, “I used to get annoyed”, Elaine would state “because Ron wouldn’t go to work”. In short, he couldn’t be arsed. In court, the judge described Ronnie as “a worthless creature who treated her like an oriental chattel”; little more than a skivvy who made his meals, cleaned his clothes, and funded his nights on the sauce. With the Troxy on its final year as a cinema, before it shut, shifts were short and with their being few jobs she could do, “we had one or two arguments about this, but we’d always make up afterwards”. It was then, that - instead of agreeing to get off his arse and earn an honest living like any prospective husband with half a brain cell and an ounce of love in his heart - he made Elaine an indecent proposal. It wasn’t her thing, but – it was said – that Ronnie had taken her to Freddie’s Tropicana Club on Greek Street in Soho. It served drinks and it played music, only it wasn’t a nightclub, but a seedy striptease. The Tropicana at 11 Greek Street was a sleezy little cesspit, hidden under a cheesy café and accessed by a set of dark-lit steps, it led down to a dingy basement which stunk of bad breath, body odour, stale ciggies and an unerringly salty stench which made anyone with a set of working nostrils gag and retch. As the only female customer, Elaine couldn’t help but feel a sickening wave of revulsion wash over her as a gaggle of perverted little gits, grinned lasciviously as they eyed her tiny body up and down. Only, Ronnie hadn’t brought her here for fun, but for work. Having nagged incessantly, although a shy girl who blushed uncontrollably and was insecure about her shape, he wanted her to become a stripper. Yes, she would hate it. Yes, she was afraid. And yes, just the thought of it made her feel nauseous. But with it paying £12 per week, three times her miniscule wage as a cinema usherette, a little bit of saucy nudity would clear their back rent and any unpaid bills, until he found work and got back on his feet. It was something she didn’t want to do, but for him, she would. And with the Tropicana’s owners also running the Peeperama on Frith Street, although the manageress said, “she was the shyest stripteaser there”, Elaine’s demureness lured in the perverts who – through her – fantasied about shy young girls. To cover their debts, she started stripping at the start of March. After that, Ronnie didn’t work again… …as with her earning more than him, he didn’t have to. Friday 23rd April 1960 started out as most days often did… with an argument. Over the past few weeks, as he became lazier, more self-entitled and often woke late with a hangover after a jolly night out with his pals paid for by her, and as their fights had become physical, she used make-up to hide her bruises. Three days before, Ronnie had finally got a job labouring on a building site. Elaine would say “I set the alarm for 7:30am, but he didn’t get up” – he didn’t want to and (in his mind) he didn’t have to. Having made breakfast, Elaine used a torch to navigate their messy bed-sitting room as the light-switch he had said he would fix was still broken, and with him “still in bed as I left at 11:05am, I asked him if he was going to work. He said he was. As I left our room, I left the door open thinking that would make him get up, but as I went up the stairs to head out, he slammed the door shut and that made me mad”. He wasn’t going to work, she knew that. With 10 shillings in her purse, she’d given him two-thirds to put food in the cupboard, which she hoped he would do. And although she’d work a 12-hour shift until nearly midnight to earn money for them, she guessed that by the time she got back, he’d be drunk. The Peeperama at 47 Frith Street was as equally seedy as the Tropicana. Being just shy of Old Compton Street, this side of Soho was surrounded by pubs, brothels and similarly seedy establishments, which catered for some of the most pathetic losers imaginable who lived for drinking, leering and wanking. Like any other striptease, this venue was as erotic as an abattoir, as a parade of bored women sat behind a foul-smelling curtain waiting to be ogled like pieces of meat before some drooling deadbeats. For these stars of the show, there was no dressing room, no glamour and no hints of Hollywood, just a few stools, a brimming ashtray, a curtain rail of unwashed slutty outfits they’d only wear for a few minutes at best, a cracked make-up mirror with a single stark bulb overhead, and an overflowing toilet. It was about as sexy as a dose of dysentery, but for a few sad gits that night, it was enough. For Elaine, “I learned the job, but I didn’t like it”, so as the purple curtains were pulled apart, again like a wound-up automaton, she started to dance. With no stage just a sticky carpet, a single light which was hardly flattering, and a cheesy track playing in mono through a crackly record player, surrounded by a semi-circle of creaky chairs and sleezy men stifling semis, a sea of leering eyes ate up every inch of her unveiling skin as with hands in their pockets, they all bobbed up and down to the sexy rhythm. Still painfully shy, as much as she hated it, Elaine did what she needed to do, to live and survive. Like so many others, although her body danced, behind her eyes she was dead, as the second she saw the sad bastards before her, she knew that all she wanted to do was to spit in their faces, or be sick, so as she jiggled her bare breasts a few feet from several possible rapists, three things occupied her mind: Hunger: as having given her boyfriend every penny she had, only able to afford a sandwich and a cup of tea all day, she was weak, and tired, and aware that the audience could hear her rumbling belly. Drugs: as being conscious of her weight, struggling to stay awake and needing something it soothe her pain and shame, she’d started drinking, and taking Preludin, an appetite suppressant and a stimulant. And finally, there was hope: as still believing that her dream could still come true, “I hope that Ronnie would get a job and that we’d get married”. But deep down, she must have known it was a lie… …as back home, a nightmare awaited her. At midnight, Elaine exited the tube at Bow, her feet aching after twelve hours tottering in high heels, dodging kisses and ducking gropes as a butt-crack of losers headed home to their wife’s cold shoulder. With her cheeks sore from grinning inanely, as she entered the dark silence of Tredegar Square, again her belly rumbled having barely eaten a thing all day. She hoped that she’d be welcomed home by her husband-to-be with a soft kiss, followed by a nice meal lovingly prepared by him, but it was not to be. “When I walked into the kitchen, I saw there was no meal”; there were no plates on the table, nothing boiling on the hob, and no food in the cupboard, just half a bag of old potatoes, barely at their best. “I went into the front room which was in darkness”, as after weeks of complaining, he hadn’t fixed the light switch, he hadn’t even attempted to fix the light switch. In fact, as always, he had done nothing. Flickering her lighter, by its limp orange glow “I saw Ronnie lying on the bed with his clothes on”, him all sprawled out like he’d had a hard day; the stale odour of beer and cigarettes on his breath, and the seven shillings she had given him for food was gone having been blown on getting pissed with his pals. “I asked him if he had been to work. He rolled over and said, ‘what’s it to you?’, I said ‘If I’m working so should you, or are you going to start your old tricks again?’ By this, I meant not bothering to work. He then said, ‘I’m sick’, I replied ‘the only thing you’re sick with is idleness’. He then called me a ‘bloody bastard’ and as I turned, he jumped out of bed, and we argued”. It was like every other night prior. He told lies, he made excuses, he never once thanked her for keeping them float by paying the rent, clearing the bills, and putting food in his belly. “And as he slapped me round the face, I tried to hit him back, but I could not reach him”, as this six-foot three-inch hulk towered over the tiny frame of Elaine. She told Detective Superintendent Beal, “I walked into the kitchen and went to a drawer and took out a knife”. When asked, “Is this the knife?”, showing her a small four-inch blade, she replied “yes, I was going to peel some potatoes and make chips. Ronnie came in behind me, I asked him if he wanted any, he said, ‘what do you care if I eat or not?’. We had words and hit me on the nose and forehead”. As her eyes filled and her nose bled red, knowing this would be another bruise she’d have to hide, she stood there shaking, knowing that this was what her life had become. There was no dream, only shit. What happened next may never be known, as Elaine’s recollection was hazy at best. Initially, she told the Police, “he walked into the kitchen and then called out”, (“Elaine!”) “when I went into the hall, he was lying there covered in blood”. The DS asked “as far as you were aware, you were the only person in the basement with him at that time. So, how do you suggest he was stabbed?”, at which she replied, “I don’t know. He might have done it himself. He was always saying he was fed up”. As those words stumbled from her fumbling mouth, they all knew it was a lie, as her fingerprints were found on the knife’s handle, and his blood had poured down her waist, her legs and her feet. Only it was clear that she was not evil woman hellbent on murdering her man, this was just a frightened girl who was in panic and fear, grasping at straws, as the life she had always dreamed of was now over. Later, Elaine would claim it was an accident “he walked out into the hall and called ‘Elaine! Elaine!’. At first, I thought he was fooling. I thought something must be wrong. I walked out and saw Ronnie lying on the floor, crouched up and a lot of blood, and I realised I must have stabbed him with the knife”. At that point, unsure what to do, Elaine shouted for Michael Molloy, a labourer who lodged in a back room on the ground floor who had always been very decent to both. Oddly, when questioned, Michael confirmed “I went to sleep and heard a scream. I thought I was having a nightmare, so I took no notice. A couple of minutes later, I heard Elaine calling me hysterically, and I thought something was wrong”. And it was. Michael would state “I found Ronnie lying at the bottom of the stairs on his stomach. I turned him over and saw blood. Elaine was kneeling over Ronnie; she was sobbing, calling his name”. As blood pooled around Ronnie like a sticky red halo, desperate to stop the bleeding, Michael started searching for a wound, “Elaine was very excited and in trying to find where the blood was coming from she tore the shirt completely off. I said, ‘this chap has been stabbed’, but she made no comment”. Dragging Ronnie to the kitchen, the only room with a working light, making do as best he could to save his life “I collected some clean underpants to dress the wound. He was coughing. I laid him on his back, had Mrs Hynes call for an ambulance, and I covered him with blankets as that seemed all I could do”. When asked why she’d changed out of her bloodied clothes and why Ronnie’s blood had been washed away, Michael replied “the floor was completely covered with blood which I mopped up. I told Elaine to get dressed and clean herself as she’d have to go to hospital” – as to him, this wasn’t a crime scene, but a shared house in which many people lived, including this young couple who often had fights. With the ambulance arriving faster than the police, as Elaine got in to accompany Ronnie to hospital, when PC Adams asked, “what happened?”, again in panic, she said “I don’t know. I didn’t see”. Not realising that everything thing she said and everything she did would be used in evidence against her. With Ronnie gasping for breath, when the ambulanceman asked “what happened?”; she said she didn’t know, she said she’d tell him later, and then “he was playing with a knife, he had an accident”. And when asked in court to recall her words, both of these professionals did so, without hesitation. And although they had sped just a short distance to Mile End hospital, by the time they had arrived, with a single stab wound to the heart, Dr Lucas would inform Elaine that Ronnie was dead. Becoming hysterical, she kept saying “it can’t be, it can’t be”, and on several occasions in the hospital and on route to Bow Police station, she became violent, and she had to be retained as she tried to flee. Questioned at 1:20am, an hour after their fight, asked to tell the truth, Elaine sobbed “I did do it. I was making chips, I had the knife in my hand, and I said, ‘have you been drinking?’, he said ‘yeah, so what, I’m not gonna to sit and wait about for you every evening’. I saw red and struck out with the knife”. An autopsy conducted by Dr F E Camps at Poplar Mortuary would confirm “he had superficial scratches to his right arm and his upper chest” indicative of a fight with a long-fingernailed woman, “and a single stab wound midway between the nipples, which passed between the ribs, and embedded four inches deep (the full length of the blade) through the end of the heart and part of one of the valves, resulting in extensive internal bleeding of the left side of chest”, which was the primary cause of death. And with the Scientific Officer of the Met’ Police Laboratory unable to find any trace of alcohol in his blood or urine, the knife having been wiped clean of his blood, and Elaine having changed her story several time to several witnesses, having started with nothing, now her life was over. (End) Held at Holloway Prison, the medical officer would state “she has shown no evidence of mental illness, she has extensive bruising to the left-hand side of her forehead, upper chest, upper arms, both thighs and lower legs. All of these injuries are recent, within the timeframe of the incident”, and although impulsive and emotional, she didn’t show any sign of aggression, but got upset talking about her past. With the press taking pity on her predicament, a nationwide appeal was made to find her parents, and – after almost seven years apart – Elaine and her mother Constance were reunited at Holloway Prison. Tried at The Old Bailey on the 21st of May 1960, she pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder owing to provocation, with the prosecution not asking if she had intended to kill him, but to do him harm. When cross-examined, the Met’ Police’s scientific officer stated that no alcohol was detected because “it is destroyed a rate of ¾ of a pint per hour”, and with the pathologist confirming that – although considerable force had been used to stab him - “if, at the time, the body was moving forward, it does not need a great deal of force. It is no more than just an ordinary push”. Implying that if he was moving forward to attack her, she could conceivably have stabbed him by mistake, as she had initially thought. Described by the judge as “a pathetic creature who was full of remorse for the man she still loved”, three days later and after four hours of deliberation, a jury of nine men and three women found her not guilty of murder and not guilty of manslaughter. When the verdict was read, it was said she wept. As she was led away to freedom, when interviewed on the steps of the Old Bailey, she said “I was very much in love. I felt I could reform him. Perhaps then for the first time in my life I would have a home”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR:
On Monday 18th of August 1952 at roughly 2pm, a scream came from Flat 8 on the third floor of 21 Hanson Street in Fitrovia, W1. The neighbours found the body of 23-year-old Georgia Andreou on her bed. She had died possibly by her own hand, but how did she die and who knew what?
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Hanson Street in Fitzrovia, W1; four streets south-west of the Charlotte Street robbery, one street east of the murder of ‘The Lady’, three streets east of the rape by the cowardly billionaire’s son, and two streets south of the gangster who lost it all - coming soon to Murder Mile. Hanson Street is quite possibly the dullest street in London. It’s so dull, the dogs bark out of boredom, each flat has its own yawn, if a gallery opened up it would be shut down for being too rowdy, and the only sound you’ll hear is as a moped roars by to deliver an overpriced substandard pizza from the place at the end of the road, to brainless deadbeats who refuse to wash up, will only eat the blandest of double syllable foods and then order “Alexa, hire a flunky to chew my food and then wipe my bum”. Halfway down is 21 Hanson Street, a red brick five-storey mansion-block from which a single sound is rarely uttered. And where families, couples and singletons go about their lives within a few feet of one another, but rarely mix or mingle, except for a perfunctory “hello” and an all all-too-hasty “goodbye”. And yet, on Monday 18th of August 1952 at roughly 2pm, a scream from Flat 8 on the third floor of 21 Hanson Street carried so far that many of the neighbours came flocking to see what the commotion was about. A woman was dead, possibly by her own hand, but how did she die and who knew what? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 234: Deadly Soap. When there’s no separation between religion and the law, too often the laws of our land are shaped by moralising policy makers who have very little connection with the side of the society that their law affects. And with almost no recourse, too often it’s the innocent who are driven to take drastic steps. Georgia Antoniou was born Georgia Andreou on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on an unspecified date in 1929, as one of two daughters and a son to Anastasia. Being a traditional Greek Cypriot who was raised as a Greek Orthodox Christian, when they came to Britain five years before, they brought with them their language, culture and beliefs, which were hard to replicate in post war Britain. As a trained dressmaker, Georgia got work as a seamstress at a clothing company called Linda Lea off Oxford Street. In March 1949, she married George Antoniou who worked as a commission agent, and for the last two years, they had lived in a small self-contained flat at 21 Hanson Street in Fitzrovia. Something that rankled Georgia’s values was that she wasn’t married in a Greek Orthodox Church, but in a local registry office. It was never explained why, as her faith had never waivered (as far as we know), but it doesn’t make sense; as the first Greek Orthodox Church in London was built in nearby Soho in the 1700s, for centuries London has had a thriving Greek Cypriot community, and as a Crown colony from 1925, during World War Two, this city became the seat of the Greek government in exile. As a working-class woman who spoke limited English, like many, she found all the support she needed by keeping close to her family and community, especially during times when she needed them most. On 7th of June 1952, 23-year-old Georgia visited the surgery of Dr Michael Liassides in Kentish Town, as her mother Anastasia sat in the waiting room. Having examined her, although an initial test proved inconclusive, on the 10th of July, just one month later, Georgia got the news that she was pregnant. Like her mother, she would have made a great parent, and being fit, strong and healthy, there was no physical reason not to have a child. But as recent immigrants struggling to stay afloat in a foreign land and with her relationship with her loving husband a little strained, this wasn’t the right time for her. It was the wrong decision for her to have a child at that very moment. It was unfair on the baby to be born into a family which wasn’t ready to accept it. A baby should be welcomed into the world out of love not reluctance, having been forced to exist owing to laws written by men and demanded by large swathes of society who will never give birth. And as much as she would love her child dearly, it wasn’t right to burden it with a life of want, when she could wait until her dire circumstances had improved. Some might say, “well if she didn’t want a baby, then she shouldn’t have had sex”? But everything was against her; the pill didn’t exist yet, condoms were outlawed by her religion, and abstinence was an option, but how often is consensual sex ever consensual? Is it always an act of mutual passion, or does one party feel pestered into giving up a perfunctory ‘fuck and fumble’ just to get a good night’s sleep? Inside her body, the clock was ticking. In six months’ time, a baby would be born whether she liked it, or not. And as much as her religion forbade it, society scoffed, and the moralising lawmakers denied her any right to decide what she could do with her own body, she had an impossible decision to make… …to appease the people by what suited their moral values, or to break the law and risk everything she had worked hard for; her freedom, her citizenship, her home, her family, her health… …and – of course - her life. Until the Abortion Act of 1967, a series of unfair moralistic laws had led untold scored of good decent women to seek out the only alternatives they had to an unwanted pregnancy. Even in 1952, five years into the formation of the National Health Service, a taxpaying woman couldn’t have (what is in effect) an unwanted growth removed from their insides at a publicly funded hospital. So, many sought out unqualified backstreet abortionists, unreliable homemade remedies or drank a cocktail of unregulated poisons – which newspapers advertised as ‘a cure for menstrual blockages’ – many of which caused hair loss, fever, vomiting, bleeding, loss of kidney function, blindness, paralysis, and even death. In 1923, 15% of all maternal deaths were due to illegal abortions and the rate of unwanted pregnancies was climbing. One woman said “my aunt died self-aborting. She had three children and couldn’t feed a fourth… so she used a knitting needle and died of septicemia leaving all her children motherless”. In 1936, the Abortion Law Reform Association was set-up to campaign for the legalisation of abortion. In 1938, Dr Alex Bourne was acquitted of performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been gang-raped and was suicidal - which opened the doors to the legally acquired abortion, but only if her life was in danger and with a psychiatrist’s approval. And although the 1960s and the availability of the contraceptive pill changed women’s lives, far too many were still being killed by illegal abortions. In 1967, the Abortion Act became law which legalised abortion for pregnancies up to 23 weeks and 6 days, with no limit on a foetus with a fatal abnormality, or any birth which posed a risk to the mother. It’s a law which still exists today… …but for Georgia, living in 1952, she didn’t have that option. It’s understandable that Anastasia, Georgia’s mother, would deny all knowledge of the abortion, as under the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 and The Infant Life (Preservation) Act of 1929, even the act of aiding an illegal abortion risked her being imprisoned. So, what she knew or did is uncertain? Initially, she stated “I did not know my daughter was expecting a baby or had been to see a doctor”, which we know was untrue, but upon her arrest, the statements she gave may be nearer to the truth. Back in June 1952, Anastasia said of that time “my daughter told me that she had not seen her period for a few days”, and with it being spotty and inconsistent, “I told her perhaps it was a cold”. But with the pregnancy confirmed by Dr Liassides, Georgia’s nightmare had begun. “When we left the doctor’s house I said to my daughter ‘you have a husband and married women do have children’. Many times we spoke about the pregnancy. She said she did not want to have a child as she was not married in a church, and I used to tell her that many Cypriot ladies were not married in the church, but they did have children because the registry marriage is valid”. But as a Greek Cypriot with traditional values, Georgia was not convinced. Whether this is true or not, we shall never know. “A few days later, my daughter said to me ‘I have heard of a certain woman, and I want you to come with me so that we can see this woman. Perhaps she knows something to tell me about this matter’”. Taking the short walk along the Charing Cross Road from her mother’s house on Goodge Place to a poorly lit side-street off Shaftesbury Avenue, Georgia & Anastasia arrived at 54 New Compton Street. Anastasia would state “we went to the house of this woman, and I learned her name is Harita”. Which wasn’t entirely true, as her name was Haritini Mattheou, a 54-year-old widow with two children, who made a living as a seamstress, but – as a former nurse – helped those in need in the Greek community. Haritini would contradict “I have known Anastasia for three or four years. I met her on the corner of New Compton Street, and we talked together because we are both from Cyprus. She has been to my house many times and I have been to her address in Goodge Place about three months ago”. As the possible abortionsist, it’s also understandable why she would lie. But this is not to imply a kind of sinister conspiracy, far from it, as these were two working-class immigrant women who spoke very little English and had even less status engaging in an illegal act - not for profit, but because it was right. What their conversation was, we will never know, as – rightly afraid of the law and the ramifications of their actions – what was decided has been lost to the midst of time. Anastasia said, “my daughter and the woman were speaking together in English, which I do not understand”, whereas Haritini said “Mrs Andreou and another lady who she said was her daughter went into my flat and stayed about half an hour. Mrs Andreou talked about her feet and bad legs”, but apparently nothing else was said. As they left, Anastasia recalled “I heard the woman say to my daughter ‘it is nothing, don’t be afraid’, with Haritini stating, “they asked me to call on them at Hanson Street and I said ‘of course, one day’”. In their statements, neither of them say anything about an abortion… …and for good reason. Monday 18th of August 1952 was the day that – possibly by chance - Haritini Matheou popped by the flat of Georgia Antoniou for lunch, and Georgia’s mother, Anastasia dropped in to do some cleaning. According to Georgia’s husband, at 9:30am, “she got up, she was well, a baby was due”. And although, at 10am, he left for work as usual, he didn’t know that neither she nor the baby would survive the day. At 1pm, Haritini said she dropped by, with the door to Flat 8 of 21 Hanson Street opened by Georgia. A short while afterwards, Anastasia claimed “I thought it was right to call there and make the bed for her as usual, since I knew that she was starting work after the holiday”, having taken two weeks off. The flat was small, thin and practical; with a sitting room overlooking the street, a bedroom opposite the front door, a dining room at the back, and in the middle, a kitchen-cum-bathroom with a gas hob for cooking and a bath for bathing, as before central heating, that was how you heated the bath water. Anastasia said “I went upstairs, opened the door and I saw my daughter in the bedroom. When I saw her, I was surprised, and I said, ‘why did you not go to work’. She told me she was unwell. Then in the bedroom I saw the woman, but I had no right to say anything, it was not my room”. Which was odd as Haritini claimed “the three of us sat down and talked about the housework in general”, nothing more. In her defence, Anastasia said she was only there to make lunch, as proven by a half-cooked chicken in the kitchen - even though she also believed that her daughter was at work and was surprised by a guest in the flat which made no sense at all - and that Haritini had was only there for a chat and a tea. It was while she was in the kitchen that Anastasia said she noticed “a bowl on the gas, I don’t know that was in it, the water was coloured”, and feeling afraid “I wanted to leave the house, not to see or know anything. My daughter said to me ‘go and sit in the sitting room. It is nothing to do with you’”. It was then that both stories converged, as apparently Georgia said ‘I’ve got a headache’, her mother told her to lay down, and seconds later, both women stated “we heard a noise like something falling”. In the bedroom, Haritini said “Georgia was lying on the floor of the bedroom… the mother and I lifted her on the bed. I then put water on her forehead to bring her round, as I have nursing experience having been trained as a Registered Midwife in Cyprus and was given a certificate in 1931 and 1935”, which was either a brave or a stupid thing to admit, given the situation which had already unfolded. By their own accounts, they had no idea why she was ill, “she had a pain in her stomach”, and although Georgia was able to open her eyes, she could not speak, was barely conscious and barely breathing. Desperate to revive her from a mysterious collapse, they did whatever they could; Haritini massaged her heart and her unstockinged legs with eau-de-cologne, and raised her legs over her head, as in the 1950s, these were believed to be effective forms of artificial resuscitation; and according to Anastasia “I smacked her on the face, bit her thumb and did what I could to bring her to, but I could not do so”. Telephoning for Georgia’s GP and stating, “come at once, bring an injection to save my daughter, she has fainted’”, Dr Liassides arrived just after 2pm, but by then, Georgia Antoniou was already dead. A single scream echoed the length of Hanson Street that day… …only, it wasn’t the death throes of Georgia, but the grief of her mother, Anastasia. Karen Russell in Flat 8, two floors below, ran up the stairwell to see Anastasia collapsed on the step; hysterically wailing like her soul was full of nothing but tears, as – described as demented – she ran from room-to-room, pulling at her hair and hitting herself, unable to comprehend the sheer horror. Joined by two neighbours, as they stood in the doorway, Caroline Ferris and Margaret Poli both saw Georgia’s lifeless body semi-clad and sprawled across the bed, and it clear that she was dead; as her open mouth uttered nothing not even a breath, a glistening tear on her lid was the only movement in her staring eyes, and her sweat-soaked face was etched in terror as if she had seen the devil himself. Unable to get any sense out of Anastasia, when asked “‘what happened?’, Haritini said ‘I don’t know… she fell down here’”, and when asked, “‘why haven’t you sent for a doctor?’, even though she had, she lied ‘I don’t know her doctor’, as Haritini silently slipped out of the flat, unseen by anyone. By the time that Dr Liassides arrived, the ambulance had already been stood down, a local undertakers were aware, and the attending Police Constable had alerted Scotland Yard to a possible homicide. Headed up by Detective Inspector Percy Woolway, this was a scene he had seen far too frequently in the last few decades, as many good women were driven to do something drastic out of utter despair. As always, the evidence was self-explanatory: as upon entry, the acrid stench of disinfectant stunk the air, as well as the sheets, the pillow and the groin of the woman herself, as with her stockings, slippers and knickers on the floor, her pale bare legs were stained with a steady stream of congealed blood. In the basin lay the recently pared shavings of a block of Lifebuoy soap. On the stove, a soiled pan sat empty, as around it fizzed the white scum of a foamy lather. And between her legs, lay an assortment of items which hadn’t arrived by accident; several rolls of cotton wool, an enema syringe, and the remainder of a glass containing two ounces of stiff soapy jelly made up of one-third of carbolic soap. None of these items belonged in the flat, and when quizzed neither woman said they recognised them. Having already questioned Anastasia, Haritini Matheou was arrested one week later, and at her flat at 54 New Compton Street they found a similar syringe, an identical brand of soap, and “eleven ampules of an undisclosed drug” which she admitted was to aid only herself, owing to a bout of constipation. On 3rd of September, Anastasia Andreou and Haritini Matheou were charged “with the manslaughter of Georgia Antoniou and conspiring to procure an abortion”. Both women denied the charge, they both gave statements pleading their innocence, and they were both remanded on bail for seven days. They denied any involvement in this illegal abortion… …but the evidence of what happened to Georgia was irrefutable. Her autopsy conducted by Dr Donald Teare at St Pancras Mortuary told a tragically familiar story. Listed as young, healthy and free from disease, a few hours or maybe a day before her death, Georgia had laid on her bed, praying that her unwanted and unspoken pregnancy would vanish without a trace. With her undergarments removed for a procedure she couldn’t have done alone, the pared shavings of carbolic soap, of the type freely available to most households, was dissolved in a warm pan of water until it reached a frothy Luke-warm lather, as if she was about the scrub her kitchen. Partially made of carbolic acid, it acted as an antiseptic for cleaning wounds, unless it was administered in a purer form. As a common form of abortion, the dissolved carbolic soap was inserted directly into the uterus using a rubberised enema syringe. Containing 30% carbolic acid, as the frothy lather engulfed the womb, being an irritant, the acid would cause the lining to enlarge, enflame and bleed until the embryonic sack had burst, and a few days later, the deceased foetus would be expelled… or that was the idea. A bruise on the back of the uterus’ neck was consistent with an enema syringe, and although a white fizz had enveloped the recently deceased two-month-old foetus, the pathologist formed the opinion “that the amount of pressure needed to distend the uterus by 4 ½ inches could not have been caused by the girl herself”. The baby was dead, having drowned in acid, but with the foetus still un-detached, force had to be used, her placenta had ruptured, and the lethal froth had entered her bloodstream. Carbolic soap was a cheap and readily available form of abortion to the average woman in need, its effects were quick, effective and devastating to the foetus, but – all too often - lethal to the mother. It only took a small tear in the delicate lining of the placenta for a few air-bubbles to leak inside of her. Once within, even a microscopic bubble of carbolic acid or even just pure clean air could circulate her entire body in just three minutes resulting in an embolism in her veins, arteries, heart, lungs and brain. Suffering confusion, paranoia, anxiety and even audible and visual hallucinations, her prolonged death – which the pathologist said “took as much as ten minutes” – would have resulted from arrhythmia, heart failure, lung collapse and a stroke, as lying helpless, her last gasps of breath frothed with blood. With no way to revive her, all Anastasia could do was to watch the daughter she had tried to save, die. And although, just 15 years later, an abortion had become a legal day procedure in a local hospital… …owing to unjust laws by the moral few, Georgia was killed because she didn’t have a choice. (End) Tried at the Old Bailey on 28th of October 1952, dressed in black and weeping uncontrollably, Anastasia Andreou stood in the dock, alongside Haritini Matheou. Pleading not guilty to the charge of feloniously killing Georgina Antoniou and unlawfully conspiring to procure an abortion, with such a public outcry of sympathy over this case, the prosecution provided no evidence, and both women were dismissed. It’s a situation that neither woman should have found herself in, to be forced do something illegal and harmful to herself, over a choice which was made by a stranger whose own belief had shaped the law. We all have a right to speak, a right to think and a right to believe, but the laws should be there so we all have the right to choose what is best for us, not what is best for someone we don’t know whose beliefs and lives may be contradictory to ours. And if law results in thousands of innocents dying every year, you have to question whether it’s right that a belief takes precedence over the lives of others. Since the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act, around 10 million abortions have occurred legally and safely in the UK, 214000 happen in England and Wales every year, and with a mortality rate of just 0.6 deaths per 100,000, it’s a comparatively safe medical procedure which is only getting safer. The International Classification of Diseases stated that the most common reason for 98% of abortions was "the risk to woman's mental health". Thankfully in the UK, woman have a choice. But back in 1952, and even today in some supposedly “civilised” countries, women like Georgia have no choice at all. So, ask yourself this? What do you want? A law which goes against your supposedly moral beliefs, or – once again – thousands of desperate women driven to their deaths and being killed by deadly soap. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
23 Greek Street, Soho, as it looks today
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE:
On Sunday 31st of July 1904, at roughly 12:30am, a fight broke out near the doorway of 23 Greek Street in Soho between two young men; Edward Devanney and Raphael Ciclino. Amidst a mele of fists and drunken yells, although its witnesses spoke of the shouts they’d heard and blows they’d seen, it seems strange that no-one saw the truth.
THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Greek Street in Soho, W1; a few doors south of William Crees‘ deadly dose of syphilis, a few doors west of Susan Latterney’s Stockholm syndrome, a few doors up from Joe Gynane’s drug-fuelled murder spree, and a few steps from the hobo tax-collector - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 23 Greek street currently stands a five-storey office block, with the shell of Pleasant Lady Jian Bing’s Chinese street-food stall below and the stench of avocadoes and falafel coming from the production companies above. And with a horrible pebble-dashed façade like a statue’s been sick, a set of nasty white windows reminiscent of a 1980s comprehensive, and its graffiti covered wall wreaking of wee-wee, it’s so ugly, it looks like an architect sat on a box on Meccano and thought “meh, that’ll do”. Back in 1904, at 23 Greek Street stood a provisions shop called Dearden’s ran by the Dearden family, and above, in a modest three-storey terrace house was their home with space for several lodgers. On Sunday 31st of July 1904, at roughly 12:30am, a fight broke out near the doorway of 23 Greek Street between two young men; Edward Devanney and Raphael Ciclino. Amidst a mele of fists and drunken yells in a brawl which risked one man’s execution and another’s death, although its many witnesses spoke of the shouts they’d heard and blows they’d seen, it seems strange that no-one saw the truth. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 231: The Good Samaritans. Drinking and fighting are nightly staples of most cities, as once the pubs are shut, a puke of insensible idiots, incapable of rational thought after they’ve had a whole pint of ‘happy juice’, grunt like flatulent pigs as their lonely braincells command sovereign-ringed fists to pummel another Neanderthal’s head. Some say good riddance to these dregs of society… …but sometimes, there can be more to a fist fight than at first glance. The night of Saturday 30th of July 1904 was a hot one, as steam rose from a recent downpour on the streets, and with the air sticky, it seemed like the only way to quell the city’s temper was by drinking. 25-year-old Edward Thomas Devanney was a superintendent at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square. Holding down a steady job and living in a one-roomed lodging on New Compton Street, he had no real plans for the future, as he was all about Saturday nights out with his pals, with a few pints and a fight. Described as a ne’er-do-well, a yob, an oaf and a lout, he wasn’t the best blessed with brains, and once he’d got a few pints inside of him, he didn’t care who got hurt, as it was all about his pride and his fun. With a conviction for stealing a purse and a watch, he served 8 months hard labour. Having not learned his lesson, he stole another watch and served another 12 months. And with 12 more months for more theft, and 12 more months for the assault of a policeman, he’d spent 4 of his 7 adult years in prison, and – having shat his life away – he was unlikely to deviate from a path of theft, drink and violence. But then again, morons will always be morons. Having finished his shift at the Hippodrome, Edward did what he always did and headed out to Soho for a few pints with his pals; Arthur Langley, Edward Lynch and his brother-in-law James Albert Lee. As a 32-year-old labourer with scars, tattoos and cut knuckles, Arthur Langley had served nine years plus for theft, burglary and assault. But having realised he had wasted a third of his life, having almost gone straight, he hadn’t been arrested in five years. As for the other two, Edward Lynch was a local tailor who – being red-faced and a bit too loud – was prone to brawling but rarely got into any trouble, and James Lee, who – as a sober man – often stood quietly at the back, as tall and thin as a bean pole. And not being much of a drinker, James tried his best to keep his brother-in-law out of trouble… …and although he would try, he would not always succeed. Finishing his shift at the Hippodrome at 11:30pm, during which (as he often did) he had got pissed, Edward met up in a pub on Shaftesbury Avenue with Edward Lynch, Arthur Langley and James Lee, where it is said he swigged back three pints, until the pub called ‘last orders’ at just gone midnight. Booted out of the beverage shop and (almost certainly) singing a dirty little ditty about an impressively bosomed girl called Sally, the lads headed into Soho, and – for reasons which were never explained – they slunk to 23 Greek Street, where one of the Hippodrome’s super’s called Freddy Hopkins lodged. With their drunken bravado echoing across the deserted street, at about 12:30am, although the shop was shut and lights in the lodging above were out, Edward banged hard, and rang the bell incessantly. Waking Maud Dearden with a start, the landlord’s 18-year-old daughter said she heard “singing and banging… men shouting, and what sounded like a something being smashed”, and with their raucous braying unsettling the sleeping children, Maud stormed downstairs, her little sister cowering behind. Among the dark of the hallway, as a light burst in from outside owing to the broken front door hanging off its hinges, all she saw was the sinister silhouettes of three men; Devanney, Lynch and Langley. As a petite young woman wearing just her nightdress, she should have been scared, but being so used to their obnoxiousness, all she saw was a bunch of slurring intoxicated arseholes staggering around like their hips were made of jelly and demanding “where’s Hopkins… where’s that fat bastard got to?”. This wasn’t a robbery and this wasn’t an assault, this was just three drunks being dickheads. With this being her home and her family, Maud ushered these mashed menaces out, hissing “no, you’ll have to go, he’s sleep, come back tomorrow”, and with bean-pole frame of James Lee – as motionless and vague as ever, and almost silently blending in with the streetlamps – as he slowly shepherded the rear two outside - “come on lads, home time I think” - at that point Edward was still trying to get in. When questioned by the Police, Edward Devanney said “we rang the bell, but did nothing more to get in. Miss Dearden came down... I asked for Hopkins... she tried to stop me going upstairs. That’s it”. But as the lads congregated outside of 23 Greek Street… …a dark and sinister stranger approached. As Freddy Hopkins peered from his window, too cowardly to confront the commotion below, he’d tell the court “I saw a foreign man come round the corner”. Stocky like a bulldog, strutting like a peacock, and as stiff as a seething cobra ready to strike, dressed entirely in black, the dark Italian spat furiously. Having never seen him before, the lads had no idea what he wanted, as in an indecipherable gibberish, the Italian shoved Edward hard - “’ere what’s he saying?”, “nah f**k off mate”, “leave it out”, “I don’t f**king know who he is, nutjob is what”, “are you mad or summat?”, “who the f**k does he think he is bossing me about in my country, it’s a bloody liberty innit?”, “he must be a nutter, bloody eyeties”. But with this foreigner’s fists balled like the heads of two sledgehammers, although they didn’t speak the same language – spoiling for a fight – as James ushered Lynch and Langley across the street to safety, Edward and the ‘foreigner’ got stuck in, knocking seven shades of shit out of each other. As I say, morons will always be morons. Their fisticuffs only lasted a minute at best, maybe two, and with both men pummelling each as much as the other; nobody won, nobody lost, face was saved and with James separating the two, they both went about their ways shouting obscenities from ever-increasing distances - “vaffanculo”, “f*ck you”. And as they walked in different directions – not doubt regaling their pals with a bullshit version of this pathetic little spat – for Edward, although fuming, he’d had a good night, a few pints and a fight. It had begun as quickly as it had ended… …or, at least, that’s what they thought. Having walked up Greek Street, going the wrong direction, Edward recalled “after eighty yards I said I was going home, and I went back down towards Old Compton”, as he lived on New Compton Street. But as they approached the corner, there he was, the ‘foreigner’, right outside of 23 Greek Street. With the Italian facing the other way, and Edward still fuming, instead of letting it be, being nothing more than a drunken lout “I got up to him and struck him with my fist two or three times”. As he often did, James tried his best to break-it-up, shouting "don't a fool, come away", but Edward was in deep. Punching fast and hard, although Edward had the upper hand being a few inches taller, all it took was a single mistake for his life to change forever. As having put the wrong foot in the wrong place at the wrong time, as he tripped over a kerbstone, “I slipped to the ground; and next, he was on top of me”. With the Italian raining down punches and Edward giving him sharp thumps to the gut, the two men pounded on, their bleeding fists slamming into each other’s bodies, as James tried to split them apart. As a mele of flying limbs and furious grunts, it was impossible for any witness on this partially lit street to see what had happened; as some saw fists, others only saw feet, some said several men were at it, others said it was just the two. And although several witnesses were heard to cry "don't two him" and “no blades, come on, play fair”, some saw a knife being pulled, and whereas others saw nothing. Rising to his feet and fearing retaliations from the angry men who surrounded him, as the Italian fled, Lynch recalled “he rushed across the road. Devanny got off the ground and went after him”. Running down Old Compton Street, “Devanney overtook him and struck him once in the face”, but hearing a cry of “Police! Help” from one of the eyewitnesses, as the Italian headed west, the lads headed east. Bleeding from a swelling eye, spitting bloodied spittle and limping ever more profusely as he staggered down Charring Cross Road, with his adrenaline still pumping, it was only as he took a moment to catch his breath, being aided by pals Lynch and Langley, that Edward realised that he had been stabbed. With blood over his hands, and pooling down his legs in a never-ending torrent, with a knife wound to his right buttock, but also his groin - a soft plateau of flesh containing vital arteries and veins - they caught a cab and sped to Charing Cross Hospital. Immediately admitted to casualty and given the very best available treatment for his wounds, a few hours later, 25-year-old Edward Thomas Devanney… …was discharged from hospital and made a full recovery. Mercifully, although he had two knife wounds; one an inch long to his right buttock, and the other in the lower part of his abdomen, having only punctured the skin, these superficial wounds were stitched and dressed, and – with no long-term damage to his vital organs - Edward left and went about his day. The fight had been bloody and brutal, but no-one had died… …no-one. At least, not yet. Like Edward, he didn’t know that he’d been stabbed, but seeing him stumble away from a raging crowd on Greek Street, a taxi driver drove him straight to Charing Cross Hospital. With a seemingly superficial wound to his abdomen, it was stitched and bandaged, but as he drifted in and out of consciousness, with the blade having punctured his intestines, the tall thin frame of the patient grew paler and sicker. As his own guts had poisoned him, knowing he was unlikely to recover, the doctor said, "you know you’re going to die?" and having mumbled "yes", a few minutes later, 22-year-old James Lee was dead. He hadn’t drank, he hadn’t argued, he hadn’t fought, as being a quiet sober man, this good Samaritan had simply stepped in to break up the fight, and yet the blade meant for Edward had ended his life. That night, in a dingy little lodging at 14 Arthur Street in West Brompton, James’ murderer returned. As the dark foreigner entered his gloomy hovel, pulling from his bloodied pocket a bone-handled clasp knife, before stashing the evidence in his drawer, he wiped the blade clean with a rag and a sharpener. Only this was not a callous killer impassive having taken a life, this was a man in panic. 32-year-old Italian Raphael Ciclino was so perturbed by his own actions, that when his landlady (Rosina Martin) came to deliver his breakfast in the morning, she’d state “the door was shut, the room was empty and the bed was dirty as if somebody with muddy clothes had lain on it, and someone had been sick”. Those who knew him said that Raphael wasn’t an uncouth lout, but “a quiet and reserved gentleman who was sober, peaceful and was no bother to anyone”. He didn’t drink or fight, he just worked. The next morning, being too terrified to flee but also too poor to not earn, Raphael returned to his job as a kitchen porter at the French Club on Lisle Street. Having misplaced his hat, although his tatty old waistcoat now sported a new hole and several fresh stains which no-one knew was blood, what made the cooks laugh was his black eye, as ‘apparently’ this stout little man had got into a fight. (laughs) (Banter) “who gave you that then, your missus?”, “men did it, Englishmen”, “ah yeah, right, and how many men we talking?”, “six, maybe ten, I not know”, “ha, six he says, maybe ten, my speckled arse”. He worked his shift as best he could, washing dishes with shaking hands and getting ribbed about his fight, but with his description circulated through Soho, it was only a matter of time until he was caught. On the morning of Monday the 1st of August, Raphael Ciclino was arrested at the French Club having been pointed out by the cowardly Freddy Hopkins. Taken to Vine Street police station, when Detective Inspector Drew stated, “I am charging you with stabbing two men in Greek Street, one of whom has since died”, barely able to converse in broken English, Raphael looked lost. And although it didn’t take an interpreter (who would later arrive) to translate “no fight; me no knife", although that was clearly a lie, his defence was not going to be easy, as the Inspector replied, “sorry mate, I don’t speak French”. So many details would be lost in translation… …and yet, ironically, that was how the fight had begun. The evidence against Raphael was overwhelming. Examined by Dr Mitchell, with extensive bruises to his jaw, nose, legs, knees and the back of his head, the Police surgeon would state “he had been very badly mauled”, and although clearly shocked at how deadly this brawl had been, although he shook and he cried and he repeatedly vomited, there was no denying that – regardless of how remorseful he was now – that fight had led to a man’s death. In his lodging, the Police found the knife hidden in the drawer. With a reddish-brown film on the blade from where he had wiped it clean, although an attempt to destroy evidence was seen by the Police, on the bloodied specks which remained, lay a black fluff matching his pocket’s lining and a sprinkling of tobacco identical to the brand he smoked. And with Dr Ludwig Freyberger confirming that the blade was the same size as the one which had stabbed James to death, Raphael was as good as guilty. Back at Vine Street police station, against a line-up of ten stocky men of Italian appearance, Raphael was picked out by Edward Devanney (his victim and brother-in-law of the deceased), their boozy pals Arthur Langley and Edward Lynch, Freddy Hopkins the coward and Maud Dearden of 23 Greek Street. Questioned with an interpreter present, although he gave a piecemeal statement in a mix of excitable Italian and broken English, repeatedly asserting “I had no knife, only my hands, everyone see that”, even though no-one could recall seeing a knife (not even Edward), it didn’t help that he had lied. Charged with the wounding of Edward Devanney and the wilful murder of James Lee, as two men who he didn’t know and had never met until that moment, the impact of his actions were so overwhelming, that on two occasions, as he sat inside his prison cell, Raphael would attempt to take his own life. Using whatever he could find, in the first instance, he ripped off the buttons from his jacket and (made of highly toxic lead and decorated with lethal-levels of an arsenic-based paint) he swallowed them. In the second instance - having survived owing to quick-witted officers - he strangled himself using his own coat sleeves, and running fast, he ran head-first into the cell’s stone wall until he fell unconscious. Suffering little more than bruises, cuts and a concussion, his suicide attempts would prove futile… …but what had driven this quiet little man to stab a stranger he didn’t even know? The night of Saturday 30th of July 1904 was a hot one, as steam rose from a recent downpour on the streets, and with the air sticky, it seemed like the only way to quell the city’s temper was by drinking. But not for Raphael. Being a sober man, although he was sat in the Swiss Hotel on Old Compton Street with Joseph Berger a cook from the French Club, there was no argument to rile his temper and no excess of drunk to cloud his judgement, as having supped a small wine, he left the pub at 12:30am. His plan was to head off home to bed after a 14-hour shift; he was alone as his pal had said ‘goodbye’, he was walking west towards Charing Cross Road to get his bus, in his pocket he carried a tin of tobacco (as he smoked) and a bone-handled knife (as being porter and often a cook, many men in his line of work carried the tools of their trade with them), and he only stopped because he heard a scream. It was a woman’s scream. Turning off Old Compton Street onto Greek Street, to the side of the provisions shop, he saw the petite frame of 18-year-old Maud, her front door hanging off its hinges, her little sister cowering behind her, and - surrounded by drunken louts - no-one was coming to her aid, not even cowardly Freddy Hopkins. Raised well, unlike others who would have walked by, although he wasn’t a brawler, Raphael came to this lone woman’s aid and - rightly - reprimanded Edward who was trying to force his way back in. He was just a stranger, but he was the good Samaritan that Maud needed in her moment of fear. Only, with no-one having a clue what he was saying - “’ere what’s he saying?”, “are you mad or summat?”, “who the f**k’s he think he is bossing me about in my country?”, “must be a nutter, bloody eyeties” – Raphael would state “I saw a man strike a woman. I spoke to him, but he did not understand me”. And there sits the irony, as at that moment, there wasn’t one good Samaritan, but two. As with both Raphael Ciclino and James Lee trying to stop Edward and protect Maud, these two quiet men had stepped in when others hadn’t, but unable to understand the other, details were lost in translation. Initially fleeing as he was scared, the only reason Raphael returned to 23 Greek Street was because he worried about Maud. Having crossed paths, the only reason James was stabbed was because he was protecting Edward. And the only reason that Raphael pulled a knife was because fearing for his life, as the drunken lout called Edward Devanney had sunk a few pints and was spoiling for a fight. (End) By the end of the month, on 31st of August 1904, before Judge Denman, 32-year-old Raphael Ciclino was tried at the Old Bailey on the charge of malicious wounding and murder. From the witness box and through a translator, he would claim he was set upon by Edward, but also Lynch, Langley and later attacked by James Lee, that as he hadn’t a knife in his possession, he’d defended himself with his fists. Unable to decide who was telling the truth as the evidence confirmed that someone had stabbed both men, as none of the witnesses had seen a knife and even Edward would state “I cannot say for certain who stabbed him”, with the defence claiming provocation, a jury took ten minutes to find him guilty of manslaughter. Sentenced on 15th September, Raphael Ciclino was given eight years' penal servitude. And with Edward seen as one of the victims, no charges of assault, intimidation, criminal damage or violence were brought against him, and – never changing his ways – he continued living his life like a drunken oaf; who stole to suit his needs, who terrorised young girls to make himself feel big, and as a loser, who got into pathetic fights with strangers over nothing, all because his life was worthless. James Lee was buried in Westminster, having only lived 22 years of his young life. Raphael served his sentence and returned to his family in Italy. Two good Samaritans who risked their lives for a stranger. 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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